Press-Ganging My Friend Into This Bizarre World
by PSIness11
Summary: In which the tropes toll for a duo of JoJo fans, leading to reincarnation in a fantasy world utterly unprepared for them. Fortunes, misfortune, cats and more explosions than Michael Bay could dream of mark the beginning of their bizarre adventure. (Duo SI-OC); co-written w/Teninshigen.
1. Chapter 1

**A.N: Dylan is PSIness11, and Doug is Teninshigen**

' _...There's a point when all of this becomes just_ too _cliché, right?'_

I mean, the trope of dying and being reborn into another world was one that had been stretched to its utmost limits already! You've got all the self-insert fanfictions that have been spawned from 'This Bites!' and other works like it; all of the anime depicting the cycle of death and rebirth, as well as all the new 'isekai' shows coming out since RE:Zero; sometimes even comics would get in on the idea!

Normally I wouldn't have been one to judge them - after all, I was the author of my very own self-insert fanfiction; a Fairy Tail story, no less. ' _I wonder, is it irony that someone who writes that trope is saying it's worn out…? Or is that just hypocrisy?'_

But one way or another, emphasis on the ' _was_ ' above - because in the shittiest karma I'd ever experienced I fell victim to a sequence of events eerily similar to the ones I wrote for my story...with _some_ differences.

Such as, instead of meeting my unfortunate end at the hands of a tragic car crash and going out in an explosion of glass and metal, I was done in by _another_ cliché. Specifically, a truck to the face.

Normally the people in my hometown are pretty good drivers. I can walk to school every day and feel safe doing it because I know they'll slow down or stop if they see people trying to cross the street. Since I'm not a suicidal asshole, I always wait for a good, long opening between cars when I'm crossing the street before moving as quickly as I can to the other side...though not so fast I look like an idiot. But of course, it only took one driver from out of town who didn't watch where they were _fucking_ going…

Well, anyone who's seen an action movie or a traffic report could probably guess what happened next. A massive impact on my right side; a split-second of weightlessness that began to feel less important as _pain_ spread through me from my devastated side; then the asphalt rushed up to meet me, there was a _crash_ , and everything went black.

That was how I reached my current position and how I ended up dealing with the problem at hand...and now that I had finished staring blankly into space, I took in a deep breath. "WHY THE _FUCK_ DID I HAVE TO GET KILLED BY A GODDAMN CLICHÉ?!" I demanded of nothing and no-one in particular. "I CAN'T EVEN COUNT HOW MANY TIMES THAT TYPE OF DEATH HAS BEEN USED AS A GATEWAY TO START A STORY!"

If there was a nearby wall (there wasn't), I would've started bashing my head off it. "IF I HAD A DOLLAR FOR EVERY TIME THIS SHIT _JUST SO HAPPENED_ TO OCCUR IN FICTION, THEN AT LEAST I'D HAVE DIED A RICH MAN!"

"Oi, blondie."

At the sound of another voice, I whipped around to face its source - but I was too damn angry to really question someone else being with me. " **WHAT?!"**

"Are you gonna stop your temper tantrum? It's getting annoying."

I _would_ have launched into another enraged rant and screeched at the source of the voice - but something about their appearance knocked a hole in my anger and gave me a moment of clear thought with which to examine the speaker.

Lying across the arms of a marble throne with a golden back, feet resting on what seemed to be a small marble cabinet with golden panelling that had been placed beside the throne, was a woman that I recognised almost instantly on my second look. Waist-length light-blue hair, with some of it pulled into a loop atop her head and kept that way with a clip shaped like a water molecule, cascaded over the throne's arm. The clothes she wore were a darker blue, closer to navy, and consisted of thigh-high boots, a miniskirt with a transparent underskirt and a vest with detached white sleeves.

She was... _beautiful…_ "Well then, Dylan Anderson, eighteen years of age, welcome to the afterlife I guess." She droned. "You know that you died, so I don't have to give you the usual speech…" She flipped her hair in a way that, somehow, _reeked_ of condescension. "Even though you did just try to blow out this goddess's ears with your whining, I suppose I could forgive that and offer you the same choice everyone gets…"

And a fucking _bitch._ Yes, that was who I was being faced with. Straight from the world of Konosuba, _some_ way, _some_ how, I had been 'graced' with the presence of history's absolute most useless goddess.

 _Aqua._

"It's unfortunate that your life ended so abruptly, as many do…" She continued, but she didn't even bother trying to look sincere when she offered the closest thing to a commiseration she'd yet spoken. "But that's what I'm here for; to offer you a second chance you didn't get in life."

Her words got me to focus on her again, rather than on my musings about just _how_ I had been shuffled into an anime's afterlife and my still-growing anger. "That's right...I was hit by a truck." I muttered to myself. "I guess I...really am dead…" I shuddered, putting a hand over my heart and blanching when I realised there wasn't a heartbeat. "Oh _no,_ I-!"

"W-well, not quite." I looked up at Aqua, verging on having a panic attack, but found that this goddess managed to enrage me even past the point of acknowledging the reality of my situation. I didn't _fucking appreciate_ her struggling to keep a goddamn _straight face_ when I was _dead!_

"What do you mean, 'not quite'?" I demanded, not quite willing to hope but feeling a glimmer of something like it run through my mind. "Am I not really dead?"

Aqua's hold on her composure seemed to be slipping further and further, her features going red and her mouth twisting itself as it tried to smile while she tried not to. "N-no!" She shook her head. "You're definitely dead; it's just, you didn't die like you think you did…"

' _...Wait, what does she mean by-'_

"PFFFT!" Aqua's composure finally reached its limit and _shattered_ , reducing her to a giggling mess of a goddess. "You didn't get hit by a truck!" She managed to gasp out around her laughter. "You were hit by something _way_ funnier!"

I blinked. "Wha-"

"YOU WERE HIT BY A SMART-CAR!" Aqua finally blurted out, before transitioning from gigging to full-blown, almost maniacal laughter that _should_ have carried her off her throne and onto the floor with the way she was rolling around...but it seemed that a goddess wouldn't fall in her own domain unless she wanted to, since she just kept going back and forth on the arms of the throne.

In the meantime, I just stood and stared blankly, not really registering anything outside my own mind. _'Somehow, someway...I must have unknowingly committed some ultimately evil sin for God to hate me this much.'_

"W-wait!" Aqua gasped. "It g-gets b-better!"

' _There's more?!'_

"W-when you landed, your b-body came to a stop in the funniest position!" She declared, pausing for effect before throwing out her next words with a whole new gale of laughter. "FACE-DOWN ASS-UP!"

' _OH GOD_ FUCKING _DAMMIT!'_

Aqua kept laughing on her throne, holding her stomach as tears ran down her face. "Everybody who saw it couldn't help but snicker at the sheer slapstick! Even the paramedics chuckled as they loaded you into the ambulance!"

The anger I hadn't yet finished venting, and which had been growing exponentially with each second I spent in the presence of such a useless, bitchy goddess, gained whole new life and started boiling the blood in my veins, even as Aqua's laughter began dying down. "If you were anybody else…" I growled, clenching my fists, "I would punch you _right_ in your _stupid fucking face_ , Aqua!"

The goddess blinked, finally ceasing her laughter as she observed me from where she was still lying sideways on her throne. "Eh? How do you know who I am?"

' _...Oh,_ fuck! _I just made the ultimate 'blow your cover' stupid mistake! Oh God, now she's gonna start asking questions! She_ can't _learn that she's an anime character -_ especially _not while my afterlife is depending on her! Oh fuck me, what have I_ DON-'

"Oh my!" Aqua laughed, bringing her right hand up to her face and holding it flat at the level of her chin. "It appears that even humans of _your_ world know of the wondrous Aqua-sama - and in America, no less!"

' _I suppose it's a damn good thing her ego is larger than her IQ...and seriously, a fucking ojou laugh? Did someone curse me to live a life of tropes or something?'_

"Well, even if you've heard of me before, allow me to properly introduce myself." The blunette goddess spoke, shifting on her throne so she was sitting properly. "My name is Aqua; I am a Goddess that typically guides humans who have died young in Japan." The somewhat regal air she had tried to adopt when she changed her sitting position cracked in a second as she snickered to herself. "But your death was too funny for me to ignore."

' _...I really,_ really _want to punch her in the face.'_

"So, Dylan Anderson," she continued, "I have something nice for you."

Well it was about _fucking_ _time_ she got to that; at least she'd finally stopped laughing. "You see, in a world different from your own, there exists a powerful king of demons whose armies have been wreaking havoc upon the people there. So this world is in kind of a pinch…"

"So you offer people a chance to go there after they die, right?" I interrupted her; I already knew the BS spiel she'd give me.

"Yep!" She cheered, clapping her hands together with a condescending smile. "You're smarter than you look!"

The look she gave me was the kind of look you'd give a kid who just finished his homework, and my eyes narrowed in response. "I'm really starting to hate you…"

Aqua didn't even acknowledge me as she launched further into her sales pitch. "So somebody like you would be perfect to go into that world! Someone who's raring to get started with another chance!"

I hummed. "That sounds all well and good…"

Aqua smiled widely. "Then it's all settled! I'll just ge-"

"BUT I REFUSE!"

My lips curved into a satisfied smirk at the utterly shocked look on her face, and it took her a few seconds to recover. "EHHHHHHHHHH?!" She semi-screamed, questioning without words - though she provided them soon after. "B-but, you just said it sounded good!"

I nodded sagely, turning my back on her. "It does, but what's in it for me?" I questioned, shaking my head. "And it sounds like I'd be working for you…" I began to walk away from the shell-shocked Aqua, counting down in my head. ' _Three...two...one...and…'_

I felt a tug on the hem of my pants, and turning around I saw that Aqua had dashed across the distance between myself and her throne to latch onto me. "W-wait, you _will_ be getting something out of this!" She declared quickly, spinning me around to face her and grabbing me by the shirt. "Listen! You wouldn't just be sent there with nothing - that would be absolutely ridiculous! We can't have you dying as soon as you get there, so if you do end up choosing to go to the other world, you'll get an amazing power!"

Now, _that_ sounded promising to me - and to be fair, this _was_ the option that I was going to go with, and I knew that from the moment I registered where I had ended up. But I just couldn't ignore the chance to screw with Aqua...or take the once-in-a-lifetime chance to use that line properly. "Exactly what kind of power are we talking about here?" I questioned.

"Well, there are a lot to choose from." Aqua told me, pulling out a book. _Where_ she pulled it from, however, I couldn't actually say. "Let's see here…" She murmured, leafing through it. "There's some amazing powers, ridiculous abilities and, if you want, you could even have a sacred weapon or treasure."

Aqua held the book out to me, and I began to leaf through it, quickly realising that she might have been understating things a bit. There were _hundreds_ of different powers, items and abilities to choose from. I recognised some of them - but that was a minority, really, with the vast majority being completely unfamiliar to me. ' _There's no way I can make a decision off the top of my head when there are this many options…'_

"Hey, uh, Aqua?" I started, looking up from the book. "Do you mind if I take a little while to look through this and then decide?"

A hopeful gleam that was less endearing and more disturbing appeared in the goddess's eyes. "So you've decided to go to the other world then?"

"Of course!" I replied, nodding. "It sounds like fun!"

"Wonderful!" Aqua cheered, clapping happily. "In that case, you can have all the time you need! Just tell me what you want and you'll be on your way!"

I didn't trust her happiness one bit - anything she perceived as positive was probably detrimental to my health or pride. Maybe both. Still, I was glad that she hadn't asked nearly as many questions as I'd been afraid she might. If she _had_ asked, I would have been in a much worse situation.

Well, that wasn't to say my situation was anything approaching 'good'...but even having died, having a chance to live again gave me the motivation to put up with fiction's bitchiest goddess. Still, I shouldn't waste brain cells disparaging Aqua when her own existence was more than enough insult; instead, I should focus them on choosing the power I'll receive!

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Thirty Minutes Later_

"C'moooooon...just pick one already!"

My eyebrow twitched - a motion it had repeated quite a few times in the past several minutes. "Shut up, will you?! I can't decide so easily - there are way too many good powers here!"

Lounging on her throne as she had been before, Aqua let out a low, impatient moan that was punctuated by the crunching sound of teeth on corn products. That is, doritos - her fourth bag to be precise, which would soon join the other three bags of chips, the two sodas and the magazine she had gone through while I was trying to make my decision.

Of course, even in this half hour I still hadn't reached the end of the possibilities. Hell, I didn't even think I'd read _half_ of them!

"Why can't you just choose one?!" Aqua demanded in a whiny tone. "It's been _hoouuuurs…."_

I glared at her. "It's been thirty minutes." ' _I should know; you've been asking the same thing every minute after all…'_

" _Hooouuuuuurrrrrsssss…."_

Taking in a deep breath, I counted to ten silently before once more ignoring the goddess who had spent most of the time I'd known her whining, turning my attention back to the massive book of powers I'd been handed and going back over the page I'd been distracted from. ' _Generic super strength type seven, generic super speed type thirteen,_ another _Devil Fruit, Broadsword Weapon powers from Soul Eater, Transformation Magic, Scar's arm of destruction…'_

Yes, that was just one page - no, this book _didn't_ have anything useful like an order or an index, and _like hell_ was it making my job any easier. I had so many options available to me that it made choosing nigh-on impossible! I had been looking through them for so long I'd started overthinking things; every single ability I saw listed I began wondering about how I could use it to its utmost potential, or guessing as to just how it worked if I wasn't familiar with the source material…

With so many ideas cluttering my mind it was impossible to reach a decision; I couldn't stop thinking about all the uses each and every power could have! Who the hell put all these brilliant choices in one book then decided _I could only have one?!_

"AAARGH, I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!" Aqua screamed, apparently reaching the point of snapping after only half an hour as she threw her near-empty bag of doritos across the empty space we occupied and grabbed her head with both hands. "JUST PICK ONE ALREADY YOU DAMN DITZY BLOND!"

I felt a vein pop out on my forehead and wondered if I could still lose years of my life to a stress-related heart condition when I was already dead. The fact that this happened despite my not having a heartbeat at the moment was just a testament to how far Aqua had managed to raise my blood pressure.

"I'M TRYING YOU WORTHLESS GODDESS! WHAT, DID YOUR BRAIN TURN TO WATER AND RUN OUT YOUR EARS AND THAT'S WHY YOU HAVE NO PATIENCE?!"

"FUCK YOU YOU CREEPY SHUT-IN NEET! SHOW SOME RESPECT FOR A GODDESS AS WONDROUS AS ME!"

"GODDESS?! YOU'RE MORE LIKE A DEVIL! YOU'RE A TRASHY DUNGEON BOSS FROM A TUTORIAL LEVEL WITH DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR!"

"AAAAAH!"

"AAAAAH!"

As we descended into unintelligible screaming that each of us somehow still found insulting, I found myself desperately wishing for a friendly face - someone who could help me or at least be supportive.

My first choice would probably be a relatively recent friend of mine that I'd made online, who happened to be one of the most intelligent people I'd ever met. When I was starting out writing my story, he'd given me all the help and inspiration I asked for with my writing - and all the times we'd bounced ideas about various powers off each other made me think that he'd probably have made his decision already.

Stopping my screaming for air (did I actually need to breathe right now? Even if I didn't, I should need air to speak...right?), I sighed, rubbing my temples. "Man, I wish Doug was here right now…"

"DONE!"

I blinked - then my head shot back upright as I loosed the single loudest shout I had managed that day. "WAIT, _WHAT?!"_

 _Doug POV_

There are a few sources of humour that, throughout time, have never failed to find an audience. Toilet humour. Sex jokes. Animal noises. Slapstick. The longest-running of them all, though, is death.

It's not even that hard for people to make death funny; there have been some naturally occurring deaths throughout human history which, while tragic, always seem to get a laugh. Take the mathematician Pythagoras, for example. A genius of his time, a Greek philosopher of quite some renown…and the founder of a religious movement he called 'Pythagoreanism'.

What might he have contributed to science if he had lived his entire lifespan…? Well, we'll never know, because the laws of his own religion - in particular that no follower of it may touch beans of any kind - caused him to cease his own escape of a group of assassins because his escape route would have gone through a bean field. The irony of a genius mathematician being done in by his own stupidity certainly made _me_ chuckle.

I, personally, didn't think my own death was _that_ funny...but I suppose that someone out there will laugh at the idea of tripping down some stairs, sticking a 1080 degree somersault, then smacking my forehead on the pavement and knocking myself unconscious before drowning in approximately two centimetres of water. ' _I swear, it's the kind of ridiculous thing that would only ever happen in an...isekai...anime…'_

I blinked.

I blinked again.

I rubbed my eyes, slapped myself across the face, then counted down from ten before once more opening my eyes. Nope. That was still Aqua from Konosuba - with a really guilty-looking blond guy with blue eyes dressed in tracksuit trousers and a plain white t-shirt.

' _...Waitaminute.'_ "...Dylan?"

"... _Fuck._ "

' _Yeah, that's Dylan alright.'_ I looked from my online friend of several weeks (and _this_ certainly wasn't the way I imagined meeting him in person) to the goddess lounging across her throne nearby, arms folded and a huffy pout on her face, then to the book in Dylan's arms.

Things clicked.

I walked over to Dylan silently and stared at him for several seconds. "I'm going to punch you in the face now." I told him. "I'm not sure when I'll stop."

"...You get one free shot before I start fighting back."

"Fair enough." I punched him in the face. It's fair to say things devolved from there.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Several Minutes Later_

Pushing myself to my feet, I brushed some non-existent lint off the shoulders of my hoodie, wiping away the blood from the cuts on my face and ignoring the throbbing bruises littering my body. "Right, that'll do for now."

"You're a lot stronger than you sound online." Dylan remarked, doing much the same and sighing as he looked at his now bloodstained white t-shirt. I might've felt guilty about that, but considering all the stuff that covered pavements in Aberdeen and thus now covered my hoodie back in the living world, I decided that having to wash those stains out would serve as fitting revenge.

"So are you two done with your foreplay now?" Aqua cut in, looking bored out of her mind - though the corner of her lip was twitching upwards every now and again. "'Cause since the homo-NEET over here decided to wish you dead instead of giving himself some useful power, I have to give you a gift of your own before I send you both off."

I grunted, then picked up the book from where it had fallen. Idly, I started leafing through it. After a few seconds I frowned and started leafing faster. A few seconds after _that_ , I hooked my thumb into the space between the back page and the back cover, then began drawing my thumb back to let the pages fall into place. After _two minutes_ of that, I shut the book with a thump. "Alright, fuck this, I'd have better luck doing open heart surgery following a German manual than finding any perfect ability in that mess."

I chucked the tome over my shoulder (and if it was in Dylan's vague direction then that wasn't my problem), then turned to Aqua, considering for a few seconds. ' _Fantasy world; gods and demons; devil kings; undead and spirits; magic; RPG mechanics; quests.'_

Something that wasn't too far out of place - something we could explain away, but also something which gave us a unique advantage, something that couldn't be replicated or hard-countered. It would need to be outside the box; it would need to be versatile, it would need to be powerful; it would need…

To be _bizarre._ "Alright - I've made my decision."

Aqua blinked, then turned to Dylan (who was clutching his head in pain), and barked a laugh. "So this is the guy who made your shitty fanfiction into something that literate monkeys could read? Man, you're just a leech on society trying to ride on someone else's coat-tails aren't you homo-NEET?"

My eyebrow twitched. ' _I so very much hope that we're both still alive when Kazuma drags this bitch down to earth - I just_ know _that punching her in the face would be the most satisfying thing to ever happen to me.'_ "For my gift," I told her, "I want - the Stand Arrow, from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure."

I waited expectantly for a couple of seconds, expecting Aqua to get on with sending us on our way with a brand-new ticket to unique abilities we could surely find some use for. Instead, I found that her expression had frozen. "J...JoJo's…?" She stuttered, seeming to grow pale as she began to shake in her seat.

"Uh…yes…?" I confirmed hesitantly, watching as the goddess drew her knees up to her chest and fell sideways on her throne so she was curled up in a shivering ball.

"Oh great Me-sama...the poses...the weird noises...the catchphrases…!"

A single massive shiver started at the crown of Aqua's head and travelled the length of her body until it fetched up at her boots, and I had to swallow to clear my throat and speak. "Er...Aqu-?!"

Abruptly, the goddess had shot to her feet and crossed the distance between us to grab me by the lapels, shaking me back and forth desperately. "Anything else!" She begged. "Please, anything but that! Do you want Excalibur? Or Bahamut? Unit One?! _Yggdrasil's master password?!_ I'm sure I could at least try to get those - so please don't force a tender and loving goddess like me to set foot in that place!"

My normal response when faced with a crying, panicking woman is to try and stop the crying. With Aqua, my response was to take a sharp step back and break her hold on my collar, then carefully back away so she couldn't catch me again. "What's so bad about my request?" I asked, once I had a safe distance between us. "And what do you mean 'set foot in that place'? Can't you just create or summon the blessings you bestow on people?"

Aqua shook her head. "I might be a truly great goddess, blessed with power, beauty, elegance, ability and wisdom, but my domain is water, not blessings or enchantments or creation or any of that stuff." Under her breath, I could barely hear her mutter "Who would want those domains anyway? Spending all my time making stuff for other people or making their lives better? What a waste of such a brilliant goddess's valuable time…"

' _Well, I've found confirmation. God - or this goddess, at least - isn't evil...she's just a fucking lazy waste of space. Consider yourself validated, Epicurus.'_

"All of the stuff in the catalogue is provided by other gods and goddesses for souls like you to use; so when something is requested, I have to contact that god or goddess and get it myself."

' _Translation: Aqua's completely useless, so the other deities shoved her into this corner-office job and managed to restrict all interaction with her to requisition forms.'_ Apparently the gods were smarter than I gave them credit for.

Dylan finally pulled his hands away from his head, frowning at Aqua. "Then what's the problem? What is it about the Stand Arrow in particular that freaks you out so much?"

"A goddess like me doesn't 'freak out'!" Aqua rebuffed indignantly, before flinching. "But the god in charge of that multiverse isn't the kind of person that a goddess like me should be interacting with."

I raised an eyebrow, and giving voice to the obvious question, Dylan spoke up. "So just what God is it?"

Aqua's face froze once more - then reformed itself into an expression I had only ever seen in Soul Eater before. "...Hirohiko Araki."

Dylan and I blinked in sync. "Wait, the guy who writes JoJo's Bizarre Adventure...is _also_ the God of its multiverse?" I asked slowly, drawing a nod from Aqua, whose expression hadn't changed yet.

Dylan and I shared a look before the blond turned to face Aqua again. "...But just how the fuck does that even _work?"_

"...I don't like to think about it." The goddess murmured, and I sighed into my following facepalm.

' _This is one of the forces behind the continued existence and functioning of the multiverse. I'd say heaven help us all, but apparently they're the problem.'_

"Look, can you get us the Stand Arrow or not?" Dylan demanded, drawing a shake of Aqua's head.

"The purity and brilliance of a goddess like me is far too valuable to throw away fulfilling the request of a couple of NEET souls who'll probably catch STDs and die in a couple of weeks," she declared, and I could see a vein rise in Dylan's forehead even across the distance separating us, "but I could exercise the incredible generosity expected of a goddess like myself to equip you two with Stands."

I blinked. "Wait, what? But you just said you can't get stuff from JoJo's because you won't go near Araki!"

Aqua waved her hand back and forth. "Well, I couldn't get the _arrow_ \- but Araki's such a scatterbrained excuse for a hack god of writing that he'll never notice if I just grab a couple of his little toy ghosts from one of those messes he calls timelines."

I blanched. "Hey wait a minute, you don't mean you're going to _steal Stands from the characters?!"_

The blunette glared at me. "Well of course! Those damn weirdos should be glad that they can ease the life of a goddess such as myself!"

I went to continue arguing the point - because I could only imagine the kind of problems with the timeline _that_ kind of messing around could cause for _any_ of the Joestars - but Aqua had already stuck her arms into thin air and started fishing around with her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth. "Ah-ha!" She declared, pulling her arms taut. "Got them!"

"...I am both excited and utterly terrified right now." Dylan admitted from where he'd moved up to stand beside me, and I couldn't help but agree. Even as Aqua pulled what looked like two balls of light from thin air, yanking on them until the lines of energy that passed from them and into the air which Aqua had produced them from snapped, I felt a nervous kind of energy, the precursor to a whole new life and a grand adventure to come.

I just hoped we hadn't fucked things up _too_ badly for whatever time period those Stands had come from...but hey, it's not like Aqua would have gone and gotten us anything ridiculous, right?

The ball of light that Aqua tossed at me underarm sank into my chest, where it unfolded like a flower in bloom. A connection snapped into place in my mind as a figure formed hovering by my shoulder.

It had a thick green stem for a body, with four large leaves that it balanced on like legs and an entwined set of brown roots that acted like a tail. Two light gray tulip petals with a pattern of long, dark spots on them were wrapped into a feline shape for the face, which possessed eyes on stalks that were fixed on my own. Behind its eyeballs were a line of short orange stalks that waved slightly like whiskers. It had two small holes for nostrils, set above an obviously feline mouth - complete with tongue, although it lacked any teeth.

The figure stared into my eyes for several moments. Then it let out a low, rumbling purr and padded its way down my arm, where it promptly stuck its head beneath my hand. The fact that this left it floating in free space without any visible aid was apparently ignored as the creature emitting a slight, light-green glow. I automatically started to stroke it, idly noting that I was emitting a similar glow. ' _...I got Stray Cat.'_

The Stand which had once been a cat purred happily as it floated beneath my hand, and I felt a massive grin split my face. ' _Absolute control of air_ and _a cat into the bargain. This is actually turning out to be a pretty good day._ _Plus, keeping the little guy out of Kira's hands will help out Josuke, so that's good. Now, I wonder what Dylan-'_

My thoughts were cut off there, however, by a sound. It started low and quiet - barely on the edge of hearing. Then, in the following seconds, it grew rapidly, becoming easily recognisable and then swelling until it filled the space.

Listening to Dylan's maniacal laughing, which was the kind of sound which really should have been echoing down from a mountain-top somewhere, I found myself afraid to look. Stray Cat shivered beneath my hand, and I swallowed. If I turned around...I knew there could only be one of two things to greet me.

There were only two possibilities that could elicit a sound like that from Dylan. I knew it - I knew it because I had had _nightmares_ about the mere idea of Dylan possessing either of the two Stands which could bring out such laughter. I began to turn my head, feeling as if my neck were a rusted gear...but I hadn't even made it halfway there before I heard him speak through his laughter.

"Luck has sided, with Dylan Anderson!"

I finished my turn...and I beheld the Stand floating in front of my friend.

A visibly muscular pink humanoid about as tall as Dylan himself, with a flat crown and two sharp, triangular shapes like cat's ears on either side of the top of its head. Its eyes were cat-like vertical pupils in front of blood-red sclera, with no iris. It had no nose, and its thin-lipped mouth was closed, giving it an emotionless, robotic look. It wore dark, studded, leather-like forearm-length gloves which contrasted with the white bandages wrapped around its thumbs, mirrored in style by a garter belt-like band at its waist and ankle-height footwear. Its shoulders, the backs of its hands, its belt buckle, a plate hanging in front of its crotch, both sides of its ankles and the top of its feet all bore the same design - an emblem of a skull with ears resembling its own, though the sizes and colours of the design were varied over its body.

I took in all the details, as I beheld the Stand my friend had been given.

And I knew true fear.

"Well, you've got your little pets now." Aqua brushed us off, casually dismissing the sign of the oncoming apocalypse that was Dylan Anderson in possession of Killer Queen. "So let's get you two off so you can spread the worship of the most merciful and generous goddess Aqua!"

The Stand I was stroking hissed at her. I echoed the sentiment, but judging from the gleam in Dylan's eye and the way the fingers of his right hand were starting to curl into a fist while the thumb stuck out, it was time for us to get the fuck out of dodge before there was no dodge to get the fuck out of.

I wasn't willing to test what would happen if a reality-destroying bomb went off in a goddess's realm and tried to send its progenitor back in time to before they possessed the ability to cause that explosion in the first place. Or rather, I wasn't willing to test it on a goddess as worthless as this one.

"Yes, of course, we'll definitely tell people to prey on yo- _pray for you_ , I mean, so you should probably send us off as soon as possible!" Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Killer Queen's hand mimicking Dylan's movement. "THE SOONER THE BETTER!"

"Sheesh, you shouldn't be pushy with a goddess, you insignificant waste of air and brain cells…" Aqua grumbled, but still waved her hand at us almost negligently, causing an intricate circle filled with arcane symbols to appear beneath our feet.

The following cessation of gravity was, thankfully, disorienting enough that Dylan started pinwheeling his hands, aborting what could have been the end of time and space as we knew them. Or a complete dud - I wasn't entirely sure if there was any 'air' in this domain, since even though my lungs inflated and deflated when I shifted my muscles, it didn't feel like anything was entering or leaving them. ' _The apocalypse or an embarrassing failure - that does sound like Dylan.'_

Stray Cat hissed a bit as we started floating, so I carefully gathered it in my arms and tucked it against my chest, scratching near the tip of one of its petals like I might behind a cat's ear. It settled down fairly quickly, and its grey eyes followed the same path as my own when Aqua began to speak in an incredibly bored tone that made it sound like she was reading from a script. "Brave hero, I pray that of the great many prospective heroes, you will be the one to defeat the devil king. If you do so, we shall grant any wish you desire as a gift from the gods. Now, go forth on your journey and stop cluttering up my divine home you damn shut-ins."

And having delivered her lines in a complete deadpan, Aqua vanished in a massive rush of light from the circles around us as we were carried off into a new world.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Dylan's POV_

There is, in my opinion, a valid possibility that I am the reason superpowers don't exist in my home reality.

When Aqua essentially handed us Stands on a silver platter, I honestly didn't know what to expect. I mean, honestly, of all the Stands throughout JoJo, I was expecting to get something mid-to-low tier. Hanged Man, Horus, Echoes...maybe something from part five which I wouldn't even know how to use. I sure as hell wasn't expecting to get _one of the most powerful Stands in history_ , and one of only _three_ Requiem Stands to _ever exist._

 **[Killer Queen]**. The Stand that had the power to turn anything in touched into a bomb of variable power which could detonate on contact or command. That was coupled with its two others abilities; the power to create a nigh-unstoppable, heat-seeking tank-bomb that would track down its target no matter where they went and the power to create an explosion so powerful it could break the fabric of reality and send the victim or the user back in time.

Considering that, I felt rather justified that, when the slim but tall figure of Killer Queen appeared before me, I burst into laughter. No matter how much it terrified Doug.

I honestly don't know what I was thinking when I formed a detonator with my hand. All I wanted to do was get some petty revenge on Aqua, and I didn't really consider the consequences. Killer Queen took its cue from me without any kind of resistance.

Thankfully, before I could end the universe in vaguely-justified revenge, Aqua went ahead and sent us on our way. Honestly, I didn't care about the impact that taking Kira's stand away from him would have; after all, it wasn't like it would be a _bad_ thing for JoJo's protagonists...

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Meanwhile, in Morioh..._

Josuke Higashikata, in the days since his nephew Jotaro had come to town, had experienced some pretty fucking bad days by anyone's reckoning. Today, however, looked just about ready to top the list.

He was bleeding all over, beaten to hell and there were balustrade rods blasted through his leg and torso. That wasn't particularly remarkable considering some of the shit he'd survived lately. What _was_ remarkable was the highlight of the day, that he had _finally_ come within his Stand's range of the murderer Yoshigake Kira with nothing to stop him.

Kira had summoned his Stand, Killer Queen. Unfortunately for him though, Josuke's own guardian, Crazy Diamond, overpowered it in every way, easily winning the physical battle and injuring Kira through the manifestation of his spirit. Yet as Josuke had gone in for the final flurry, his Stand's fists had been stopped cold.

Stray Cat - the strange Stand whose origin Josuke wasn't certain of but which Kira had somehow managed to put _inside_ Killer Queen - had used those damn air bullets as a shield, halting his attack. With Josuke's momentum lost, Kira had used the chance to create another one of his exploding air bullets through the combination of the Stands' powers, and even if Josuke couldn't see it, he _knew_ it was coming for him. Josuke strained to try and reach a piece of glass on the ground beside him, to intercept the attack before it could reach him and detonate...but as he did, his leg finally gave out, leaving him slumped sideways on the pavement with no way to dodge the oncoming attack.

Kira, the demonic killer Josuke had been chasing for so long, laughed as he stretched his arms forward, madness in his eyes and blood on his face from a blow Josuke had dealt him. "I've won!" He declared. "This always happens when life deals its worst to me! _Luck has sided with Yoshikage Kira!"_

Josuke grit his teeth, preparing for the explosion to come. Then he blinked as two arms, clad in blue sleeves, appeared out of thin air behind Killer Queen. One of them grabbed the pink humanoid by the back of its neck, while the other stuck itself through the Stand's back and into its stomach cavity, where Stray Cat was nestled.

Then, with a yank and an odd _pop_ sound, both Stands vanished into thin air.

Josuke stared.

Kira stared.

Hayato screamed as the air bullet came within half a centimetre of Josuke's face...then popped harmlessly.

Hayato stared.

Okuyasu poked his head around the corner and saw Yoshikage Kira staring at Josuke, who was down and bloody. " **[THE HAND]!"**

Josuke kept staring - but since Kira's head had just been scraped off his body and out of reality entirely, Kira couldn't do much staring at anything.

Hayato gurgled slightly and kept staring.

Kira's headless body fell backwards into the street, drawing the attention of Jotaro Kujo, Rohan Kishibe and Koichi Hirose.

They stared.

Jotaro idly wondered if this was the work of an enemy Stand. Then he dragged the brim of his cap down over his eyes and _sighed._ "Yare yare daze…"

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Back with Dylan_

When Doug and I phased into another world, I was expecting to lose my lunch. Either from the sheer weirdness of the experience, or from Aqua being a vindictive bitch and turning our transport into some kind of spin-cycle. To my surprise though, the experience was actually rather pleasant. When the light faded, our surroundings had smoothly become a grassy patch on the side of a road.

It was almost nice...though Doug's incessant ranting put something of a damper on the experience. "...the _irresponsible_ , _logic-defying_ things she could have done, this takes the bloody cake! She's got a newly-dead soul with high emotions and a bad temper? Well, _of course_ the best choice of action is to give them the power to _blow up the universe!"_

Doug threw up his hands, while on his shoulder Stray Cat extended its forearm leaves to the sky and yowled, having been sitting on his shoulder and staring at the teen's face for the duration of the rant. "I'm done! I quit! If this is the reality _of_ reality, then I'll kill the damn Devil King and wish for an audit! _I WILL REJECT THIS REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN-!"_

" **[Killer Queen]!"**

As I called its name, my Stand manifested in a blur of purple light, looming over Doug with its terrifyingly blank expression. Then, following my command, it did the one thing that should always be done when dealing with a friend who's ranting themselves into a fury.

It slapped him solidly across the face.

Even as Doug went from vertical to laid out in the grass in barely a second from the hit, I couldn't help but grin at the immense power which I now had at my disposal. ' _I wonder how people will react to us in this world…speaking of which...'_

Taking a second look around the area where Doug and I had appeared, I decided it seemed like a fairly ordinary spot. Somewhere near the centre of Axel judging from the buildings around us, there was a single tree growing on the patch of grass Doug was now lying in, while the street itself was bustling with people. A lot of those people were shooting us confused glances. Probably wondering about the weirdly-dressed strangers who had showed up between one blink and the next...or in a rush of light, depending on how little Aqua cared about subtlety. ' _So probably the rush of light.'_

Then again, it _might_ have been Doug's sudden smack-down that drew their attention, since there was a crucial detail about our situation that I couldn't help but notice.

 _Not a single person was reacting to Killer Queen._ Even as it hovered beside me, clear as day in my eyes, it didn't seem that anybody else could perceive it. ' _Perfect.'_

Keeping true to the admittedly... _loose_...laws of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, it seemed that only other Stand Users could see Stands. Even as I willed Killer Queen to move around me, no-one took notice of it. Well - no-one besides Doug, that is.

Unfortunately, my newfound partner didn't seem to have the same advantage. People were shooting looks at the cat-like Stand which was sitting on the grass beside him and batting at his cheek with a leaf-paw. Some of them seemed mildly interested, others seemed disgusted or afraid, but mostly they just whispered to one another.

"A Stand with B-rank strength and the ability to turn anything it touches into a bomb and he fucking _slaps me with it._ " Doug grumbled, laying on his back in the grass as Stray Cat grew bored of tapping his cheek and curled up in the sunlight, resting its petals on its forward leaves and closing its eyes as its roots curled around its stem so that their ends were almost level with the Stand's face. "If this world has something like revival beads I'm going to need to learn how to make a necklace, or this is going to be a _really_ short reincarnation."

"Oh, don't be such a baby." I told him, willing Killer Queen to mimic my movements as I shook my head. "You were working yourself into a fit."

The horizontal teen shot me a glare. "Oh yes, I was _definitely_ the one acting without reasoning here, mister-attempted-deicide."

"We're in a brand new world!" I declared. "A whole new plane of existence!" I clicked my teeth, presenting my closed right hand palm-first towards him so I could waggle the index finger back and forth. "And you want to _complain?"_ I asked condescendingly, Killer Queen mirroring me behind my back. "For _shame_ , Doug - for _shame."_

Doug's eyebrow twitched and he let out a long sigh. "So this is my life now. I think I'd almost prefer to start life in a new world from zero."

"But then you would have to give up that little guy." I said, pointing to Stray Cat. "And I don't think you'd do that, would you?"

Doug reached over without looking and lifted the Stand from the ground to rest it on his chest, where he scratched behind the tip of one of its petals without changing his expression. "That's true. At the very least, I'll have some intelligent conversation when I have to spend more than five minutes in your presence."

" **[Killer-"**

" _Nope."_ There was a loud _bang_ as all the air directly in front of my face shot away, forming a vacuum - one which was then filled in an instant by the surrounding atmosphere, simultaneously dragging my head forward and bringing in a rush of air to meet it. My head was subsequently slammed backwards, the rush of oncoming air feeling about as pleasant as a punch to the face.

The force yanked my body along with my head's new trajectory, and would have taken me off my feet if not for Killer Queen catching me before I could achieve liftoff.

As my Stand set me down, I reached up to feel my - surprisingly - _un_ broken nose leaking out a stream of blood. Now, even with that, I wasn't all that upset about Doug's actions. All things considered, I'd probably deserved that.

But Killer Queen certainly didn't think so. Almost the same instant that I registered the blood on my face, my Stand took up a combative stance, its slitted red eyes focused intently on Doug and Stray Cat, its hand already formed into a detonator.

On Doug's chest, Stray Cat uncurled itself in an instant, its grey eyes vanishing into the concealment of its petals as they swirled together, forming a shape not unlike the mouth of a cannon. Behind it, Doug brought a cupped hand to his face, holding it over his mouth where the air bent and distorted, the same effect then occurring again in an area covering his entire body.

Yeah, I wasn't about to reenact Kira's fight with Stray Cat on a crowded street.

I almost immediately enacted the will necessary to control a Stand, stopping Killer Queen from pushing the detonator; I didn't know if it had actually _primed_ anything, but it was better safe than sorry. Thankfully, the cat-like humanoid responded to my mental command without even a momentary delay, dropping out of its combat stance to stand idly in front of me. "No." I told it. "That's a _bad_ kitty; no blowing up my friend and his Stand."

Somehow, the Stand had the audacity to try and look innocent.

Stepping around Killer Queen, I placed my body between it and Doug - glancing between it and my fellow Earth-native.

Doug kept watching for a moment. Then, there was a _pop_ sound and a momentary breeze as the distortion over his body vanished, leaving him free to drop his hand while Stray Cat's features were revealed once more. The Stand shook its head and shot Killer Queen a condescending look before turning away with a huff to curl up on Doug's chest again.

I kneeled down next to Doug's prone form, willing Killer Queen to do the same. Stray Cat glanced up from its position on Doug's chest, hissing at Killer Queen. My own Stand responded with an emotionless look. "You two are going to play nice." I said, glaring at the two Stands like a mother would glare at a pair of children. "Wouldn't you agree Doug?"

The other teen hummed, rolling upward into a sitting position with Stray Cat in his lap, then wrapping one hand around the side of the Stand's head to scratch its 'ear' with his thumb and stroke beneath its chin with his index finger. "I'm sure we won't have any trouble from my little friend here. Right?" The Stand turned its head a bit to look over its shoulder at its user - then, after a moment, let out a lazy yowl before butting its head against Killer Queen's face and then curling up for more stroking.

I looked over at my Stand. "And you won't start anything... _right?_ " Killer Queen didn't verbally respond, but when it reached out and scratched right behind Stray Cat's ear, I knew its answer. "Alright, now that we've settled this little matter, how's about we find out where the Guild is?" I asked, Killer Queen offering Doug a hand.

Doug grunted, taking the proffered hand while holding Stray Cat in the crook of his other arm. "Well, the sooner we get started, the sooner we can get a roof over our heads. I'm not sleeping in a fucking stable."

"Amen to that."

I quickly willed my Stand into action, Killer Queen lifting me up into a seated position on its shoulders while its hands grasped my ankles, securing me in place. "The faster the better Doug!" I called, the people around me gaping at the sight of a man floating in mid air. "AWAY, MY VALIANT STEED!" Killer Queen sprinted off in the direction I was pointing, while I laughed happily all the way.

Behind me, Doug watched blankly, Stray Cat's eyes bobbing up and down as they focussed on my back. "A total dud...or the apocalypse." He sighed, then looked down at the Stand in his lap. "We're really going to need to practice those vacuums."

"Mrrrrow!"

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Doug's POV_

I finally managed to catch up to Dylan by following the people who were talking about some weirdo with a levitation spell, tracking the living antithesis of 'low profile' through Axel with Stray Cat draped over my shoulder and purring lazily in the sunshine. That was one thing Axel had over Aberdeen, at least - daylight.

I'd shrugged off my zip-up hoodie, which was a fairly hefty thing done in dark brown that I wore on cold days, and tied it around my waist above the belt holding my jeans up. That left my blue t-shirt bearing a white box with 'Ah' inside it on the front visible, while the legend 'The Element of Surprise' was printed underneath.

My Stand (and man, I actually had a _Stand_ \- the sheer potential I could feel in the little critter dozing on my shoulder was staggering) drew a fair number of looks from people on the street, which confirmed my personal theory that my Stand was rather unique. Since it was basically the reincarnation of Tama the cat, it had originally been, effectively, a flower which had mutated to take on a cat's characteristics and then hosted its personality, along with the Stand ability to manipulate the air around it.

Now, though, it had become _my_ Stand. I wasn't even sure how the hell that worked, all things considered...but my best guess was that Stray Cat had become something close to a familiar, a bonded creature that served as both companion and assistant. It retained a certain level of sapience, though it seemed to have had a rather positive personality shift, and could still use its powers. I had access to those same powers now. however, and in exchange it wasn't limited by its physical plant form anymore, instead being able to move under its own power. ' _I wonder if this has negated its need to rely on photosynthesis? That would basically remove its main weakness if so.'_

Resolving to test that later, I broke out of my thoughts when I finally found myself standing in front of the Adventurers' Guild Hall. It was a wide, deep two-storey building, with a sloping red-tile roof that started as the building's highest point forming the walls of the second floor and walls made from sandstone bricks. There were thick glass windows with wooden lattices set at regular intervals, with a more elaborate, circular stained-glass window set high in the clocktower-esque protrusion at the front of the building where the doors were.

Walking along the road towards it, I caught sight of Dylan just pushing through the front doors, and I stepped up my pace to make sure I was hot on his heels. I kept the doors open with an almost thoughtless flex of the new 'muscle' I could feel in my mind, launching a compressed air sphere forwards to get in between the two doors while they were closing and cause them to bounce back open after it absorbed and reversed their force like a spring.

' _So my range, speed and power are all greater than Stray Cat's. Is it because we're linked now, or because a human's Stand is simply more powerful? Probably the first. Iggy, Pet Shop and that Orangutan who controlled Strength are all proof that animals can have powerful Stands. Still,'_ I noted, feeling the control I could exert over the gas around me, ' _my range can't be more than half a metre for direct control...and that's about on the same ratio of range to body-size as Stray Cat's. So, the range is more like 'within such-and-such distance of the user's body'...I hope I can somehow find a way to extend that.'_

I slid through the gap in the doors, half expecting to find that Dylan had already either blown someone up, caused irreparable (and expensive) damage to something or started the mother of all bar-room brawls. At the very least, if it was the latter I could be fairly sure he'd win now.

Still, what _actually_ greeted me when I entered the building was the sight of him politely extending his hand to the lady in the service window to the right of the entrance (she was called Luna, if I remembered right) and introducing himself. Admittedly, of all the things I had expected from him, manners and a courteous demeanour were pretty far out there.

The building wasn't very brightly lit, getting most of its illumination from the sunlight coming in through the windows, but it wasn't too dark to see either. Directly in front of the entrance there were four lamp-posts in a square pattern, while beyond and between them was a stone statue of an armoured man, his hands resting on the pommel of a sword that was standing in front of him. Gravestone-like obelisks with purple markings stood on either side of the statue, extending to about half the man's height.

To the right side of the hall were the open windows that were for the staff to use when serving members of the Guild, set into a stone-brick wall.

On the left hand side of the hall, set before a staircase leading to the balcony which ran around the edges of the room and served as the second floor, there was a manned bar, with several barrels and some clear bottles filled with amber liquids behind the counter and several stools set in front of it. Filling the space between there and the entrance area, which effectively divided the building in two, sets of tables and benches had been put down to serve as an eating and drinking area, with two horizontal rows of each at the front and back of the hall with an empty corridor between them.

I closed the gap between myself and Dylan, coming to stand behind and just to the side of him in time to hear his introduction to the rather well-endowed blonde with hazel eyes who was leaning her clasped hands on the stone shelf of her serving window. "Hello! My name is Dylan Anderson," he greeted her, smiling, "and I'd love to join the guild! I've just gotten into Axel you see, and my friend and I have been looking for work."

The blonde shook the offered hand with a practiced smile. "Well, alright then. Though if you're new in town, do you have enough money for the registration fee?"

"Oh, yeah! Sorry about that! I do have the money...a thousand Eris, right?" Dylan asked, pulling out four coins that he _definitely_ didn't have when he left our arrival area _._ "This should cover the fee for my friend and I."

Luna took the coins, swiping them underneath the counter after glancing at them and then smiling once more. "Alright then, I'll explain the registration process as soon as your friend gets here."

"I already am." I spoke up, waving a bit when they both turned to me. "I ran to catch up when I considered the progressively more horrifying possibilities of what might happen if I left Dylan unattended, but it seems like everything's still in one piece."

The blonde raised an eyebrow. "He seems well-mannered enough; I'm not sure why you'd worry about someone like him."

' _...I feel like there should have been ominous thunder and lightning right then.'_ I glanced around the hall, scanning it for any signs of devastation that had occurred or was yet to occur...and noticed that, fetched up against a support pillar near the centre of the room, there was a quivering figure in armour.

It was female, with long blonde hair done in a ponytail that fell down their back. A yellow surcoat was worn over a long black skirt, while white armour panels hung down the legs from the belt and a white breastplate with yellow detailing covered their chest, attached to a normal pauldron on the left shoulder but an armour piece that jutted out like feathers on the right shoulder. That was Darkness - a member of Kazuma's party from the show.

And the only reason for _her_ to be shivering like that would be…would be… ' _Dylan somehow managed to make a perfect first impression; he's calmer than before; he collected those coins even though_ I _forgot there was a registration fee; Darkness is quite possibly the most masochistic masochist to ever exist in the history of anime.'_

I turned slowly to look at Dylan, and hissed my next words between my teeth, quietly enough to exclude Luna from our conversation. "Just how many times did you use Bites the Dust in the time it took me to get here?" The way he started to whistle and refused to meet my eyes was all I got off of Dylan, but it told me all I needed to know. "...One more." I said.

"Your next line is-"

""You're going to do it _one more time,_ on _yourself_ this time, and then we're going to do this again _without_ clueing Darkness into the fact that you can cause her to explode without consequence.""

When Dylan spoke the words at the same time as I did, I got a sinking feeling - and that was _before_ he turned away again, with Killer Queen fidgeting with its hands behind him. "About that...I...kinda... _can't_ use Bites the Dust on myself." Killer Queen shrugged.

I facepalmed - and on my shoulder, Stray Cat gave Dylan the kind of condescending, deadpan look that only a cat can summon. " _How. Many. Times?"_

Dylan had the gall to look only a bit guilty - like a kid who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar instead of a rampant serial murderer. "...Four."

"Four." I repeated, feeling an emotion I couldn't quite describe eclipsing most of my mental state, leaving me unable to shift my expression out of blank. " _Four."_

"...Yeah…"

"...You blew up Darkness - and _subsequently the fabric of time and space -_ FOUR times. _In a row."_

"...It sounds kinda bad when you put it like that…"

I dragged both hands down my face, pulling my jaw to its full extension before it snapped back shut when I moved past my chin. "...We didn't even make it a quarter of an hour." I noted. "We've been here for all of ten minutes and already you've killed four timelines and enabled Darkness more than anyone should ever have done."

"...Yes."

"...Excuse me for a moment." I turned around and headed back outside the guild building for a moment, where I paused. Then, through Stray Cat, I sealed the atmosphere in a bubble around myself, creating a solid shell of still air that stopped even sound from passing through. I took a deep breath...

" _ **HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY SHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"**_

Coughing, I patted Stray Cat as we collapsed the sealed atmosphere and returned to the guild. "Alright, I've temporarily unloaded my urge to kill you until you stay dead." I told Dylan. "But we should probably get our registration done before you fuck up anything - or any _one_ \- else."

"I agree."

We both turned to Luna, who had been waiting patiently as we conversed, and I smiled. "So, you said something about an explanation?" Luna nodded, standing up from her chair behind the counter and taking an odd contraption with her.

As she rounded the corner of the dividing wall between the main hall and the registration office, her height - a bit shorter than both Dylan and I - was more obvious, as well as her outfit. A loose, shoulderless cream shirt with a low neckline that had black cuffs at the top and bottom of the sleeves, jean shorts of some kind, brown ankle-height boots and a white collar around her neck with a red bowtie.

Once she was standing in front of us, she deposited the device - which largely resembled a short square tunnel made of wood, with a teal crystal in the shape of a balloon suspended in the centre of the topmost 'wall' amid several steel rings adorned with markings and brass cogs - on the counter in front of her window, then turned to face Dylan and I. "Alright then, allow me to formally explain the system."

Reaching into a pocket, she produced a blank parchment-coloured card. "Each adventurer has their own occupation, which is indicated on their registration card." She raised the card she had produced earlier to make sure we understood they were the same thing. "Among other things, it will keep track of the monsters you kill, and will organise the 'EXP' you earn by devouring or killing any creature into a system of levels that grant improvements to your stats and skill points you can use to learn skills. Make sure to try and level up a lot so you can make a difference." Finished with her quick explanation, Luna gestured to the contraption with a sweep of her arm. "Now, both of you, please hold your hands over the crystal."

Dylan and I glanced at one another. I moved forward, extending my hand over the crystal, which immediately lit up from within.

Stray Cat let out an inquisitive purr as the rings started to click around the crystal, moving back and forth as the cogs spun. White and blue particles seemed to manifest from the glowing crystal, focussing downwards through a series of three progressively smaller gold discs with holes in the middle into a needle-like conical piece that shook rapidly before disgorging a blue laser beam. It focussed down on the card which had been laid beneath the contraption, and I had to put a mental effort into not letting Stray Cat pounce off my shoulder and try to eat the glowing dot where the laser focussed as it swept back and forth along the card.

"With this process, you will each learn your current status, which should let you decide what profession you want based on what's most compatible with your stats." Luna told us. A few seconds later, the laser and the glow of the crystal died away, leaving Luna free to retrieve the card from beneath the device. "Thank you very much." She said absent-mindedly as she scanned the card, and I wondered if she was thanking me for using the service or thanking the machine.

"So, it's Douglas Macintosh, is it?" I nodded, and Luna mirrored me. "Well, let me see…" A moment later, the blonde frowned - the first expression I'd seen her make that wasn't part of her rote customer interaction. "That's strange…"

When she looked up and saw me raising an eyebrow, she elaborated. "Well, normally stat points are on a numeric scale," she explained, "but yours seems to have been graded by letter." She flipped the card to show me, and I read off the stats there.

Vitality: C

Strength: D

Intelligence: A

Magic-Pow: A

Agility: D

Dexterity: C

Luck: F

"Well, assuming C's average, that looks about right." I sighed, shaking my head. ' _I really should have kept myself in better shape. Ah, well - better late than never.'_ "So is there anything else on the card?" I asked, vaguely curious, and Luna turned it back towards herself, scanning it.

"You already have a few basic skills - Calligraphy, Orienteering, Basic Swordsmanship…" Abruptly, her eyes shot wide. "Wait - that's…!" She looked up from my card to give me a shocked look. "You...have a Unique Skill."

When I failed to be summarily shocked and awed, she gave a slightly better description, while also peering a bit more closely at me. "A Unique Skill is something that a person needs to have been born with or worked incredibly hard to develop; they usually can't be taught, and they're almost without exception more powerful than even high tier magic. I've never seen one in a level one adventurer before…"

"What's the skill called?" I asked, already quite sure of what it was, but wanting confirmation.

"It's called ' _Tama Kazetora'_." Luna relayed, tapping something on the card and scanning it again. "A skill which naturally allows perfect control of surrounding air?!"

I glanced sideways at Stray Cat, who gave me a smug look and purred happily. I grinned, reaching up to scratch one of its petals. "You hear that little guy? You're a big deal." The Stand tossed its head dismissively, as if to say 'Of course I am!', then closed its eyes and returned to being draped over my shoulder.

The interaction drew Luna's attention, and as she passed me my card, she eyed Stray Cat curiously. "That's a very interesting pet you've got there." She noted, and I smiled.

"I'd say he's more of a partner than a pet." I replied, drawing a momentarily louder purr from the feline plant. "But interesting's definitely right."

Luna smiled in a way that made me think she wasn't quite sure what to think of me, then gestured to the device again. "Well then, mister Anderson, if you'd like to do the same?" The lightshow happened once more, and Luna ended up frowning down at Dylan's card as well. "The same scale…?" She wondered aloud. "Is the registration device broken or something?"

Dylan and I glanced at one another, both fairly sure that the 'break' went a lot further than just the guild's power-testing device. A look at Dylan's card revealed that his stats were:

Vitality: D

Strength: D

Intelligence: A

Magic-Pow: C

Agility: B

Dexterity: B

Luck: B

So, primarily above-average across the board - though this time, I was expecting it when Luna's eyes damn-near bulged out of her skull. " _Another Unique Skill?!"_ She yelled, drawing a resounding "WHAT?!" from a crowd of voices.

Jumping damn near out of my skin, I looked over my shoulder to find that what seemed like everyone in the hall save Darkness had gathered themselves in a semi-circle behind us, watching our registration. ' _They must have been there at least since Luna found Stray Cat's skill.'_ I noted. ' _So much for the element of surprise, I guess.'_

"Named ' _Geijutsu wa Bakuhatsu da'_ , it…" Dylan had been growing progressively paler ever since she listed off Stray Cat's skill. As Luna stared at his registration card, he could have been mistaken for paper.

Luna's voice trailed off as she stared, staying silent for several seconds until a voice among the crowd behind us spoke up. "Uh...Luna?"

"...It allows the user perfect control of Detonation Magic on or through anything they can touch." She finally spoke, still staring at the card.

Silence reigned in the hall, even as I carefully stepped forward and gently tugged the card out of an unresisting Luna's hands before passing it to the pale Dylan. There was still silence. "...Tell you what, put me down as a Mage for now." I decided. "And Dylan as…."

"...Thief." My accomplice-in-apocalypse managed, still paper-white, and I grabbed him by the shoulder.

"And while you're doing that, _we,_ " I continued, dragging Dylan along with me to the wooden request board that was set on the hall's back well, just next to the end of the registration counter's wall, scanning the papers on show for a moment before grabbing something that had a number and the word 'kill' in it, "will go and get started with the day's work."

I then frog-marched Dylan past the rather vacantly staring crowd and out the front door without once looking backwards or sideways. Once we were out in the sunshine, I looked up at the sky and _sighed_ , Stray Cat bumping the side of my head with its own encouragingly. ' _Our first impression was an ambivalent disaster, as expected.'_

"Y'know, this is the second time you've dragged me out of the hall." Dylan noted, and my eyebrow twitched.

"...God _DAMMIT!"_

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Dylan's POV_

If I was being honest with myself, blowing a hole in reality to make a better first impression was most likely an incredible misuse of Bites the Dust. It was just that after the absolute disaster which my _first_ first impression had been I'd sort of… _reacted._

I'd really rather not dwell on what had happened before I reset the timeline. I don't _ever_ want to remember the horrendous details of my attempt at-

"So, what bloody stupid thing did you do that made ending the universe seem like a good idea, anyway?"

' _...Dammit.'_ "Well," I began, "the first time I reset it was because I had crashed through the doors at max speed, knocked over a load of people then hit someone, cracking their head against a table." I shuddered, a cold shiver running down my spine. "There was blood everywhere…"

Doug sighed. "So of course, having committed manslaughter, you chose to then instantly murder someone via spontaneous detonation."

"Well...the person whose head cracked on the table was Darkness." I admitted.

The other teen blinked, then glared at the thin air in front of his face for a moment before slamming his head forward. The air made a _crack_ noise like he'd headbutted a wall.

With a bright-red spot now forming on his forehead, the scotsman turned a blankly deadpan look on me. "What the fuck even is this?" He asked. "You got B-rank luck and this shit happens? Is this just my F-rank luck? Is fate screwing me over by screwing _you_ over?"

"That's a real possibility." I decided. "And if you _are_ screwing me over with your shit luck, then you're gonna do everything in your damn power to raise that stat." I sighed, then continued with my retelling. "Anyway, you can guess how she reacted…"

"I don't need to guess, that woman's the punchline to her own joke." Doug replied. "Did she try to challenge you to a 'fight' or just skip the pretense?"

I quickly went pale, recalling the horror of what happened. "She grabbed me by the front of my shirt and said...well, her exact words were ' _Don't worry! I will deal with this villain alone! Even if he drags me off and proceeds to have his way with me I'll definitely never break - not even if he keeps going on, and on, and on, and on…!'_."

Doug shivered, a similar movement running from Stray Cat's tail and all the way along its body to its head. "It seemed funnier to think about that kind of person when it was just Juvia on the other side of a computer screen."

' _...I'm going to ignore that.'_ I decided. ' _Now isn't the time to convert him to the wonders of having Juvia as a waifu.'_ Even if he _was_ totally wrong. "Anyway, Killer Queen just sort of reacted," I recalled, "there was a flash of rainbow light, and then I found myself back to right when I was about to walk in the doors. I figured it was Bites the Dust - but I remembered what had happened…"

I shivered again. "And so did Darkness."

Doug looked a bit like he wanted to cry as he rested his face in his palms. "I went eighteen years of my life without any major incidents…" He muttered. "Then in the same day I was wished dead by my friend, made into a Stand User, transported into a different world and became a four-time accessory to the murder of the time-space continuum. And now, to top it all off, I'm attached to a person who can offer Darkness an infinite cycle of lives and deaths with any experience she can get in between them." Stray Cat let out a sad yowl to the sky, while Doug shook his head. "Mum...Dad...where did I go wrong…?"

"It took me two more resets to convince her I wasn't a villain and explain what was happening." I continued. "And...well, I didn't mention it before - but each time I reset the timeline, she exploded." I honestly felt bad for Doug. He was a fairly rational person usually, and this was all pretty insane. "I reset it a fourth time because she kept jumping me the second I walked through the doors. I had to get her into a state where she was too…" I searched for appropriate words. "... _Far into bliss..._ to move."

Doug just stared at me for several long seconds, Stray Cat's slitted grey eyes focussing along the same path as his human ones, before speaking. "So what you're saying is we should start running before the afterglow wears off?"

" _Yes."_ I agreed. "But before we do that, could you pass me Stray Cat?"

The scotsman narrowed his eyes, reaching up with his right hand to stroke the Stand on his shoulder as it growled lowly. "Why?"

"Because I need something cute and cuddly to hold before I go _off the deep end._ "

Doug blinked, then sighed. "I _did_ think you seemed like you were handling this too well…" He turned to his Stand, raising an eyebrow. "Well?" The feline plant met his gaze for a few seconds before turning to look at me, its tail-roots swishing behind it as it thought. Then, after a couple of seconds, it lazily jumped down from Doug's shoulder, padding along the ground to stand at my feet, looking up at me. "Mrow?"

Crouching down, I gently lifted the Stand into my arms, resting it comfortably in the crook of my left elbow while my other hand became occupied with scratching it under the chin. Stray Cat eyed me lazily for a moment, before its eyelids slid closed and it burrowed its way a little deeper into my arm, starting to purr. The simple action of petting and scratching the catlike Stand served to help me **furiously repress all my feelings** over my actions. "Alright, _now_ we can run."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Rolling Hills, A Few Minutes Later_

"Hey Doug, what exactly was the request you took?" I asked, catching my breath on the grass of Rolling Hills.

Exactly as its name described, Rolling Hills was a completely uneven area of grassland due West of Axel, where every step was either uphill or downhill. There weren't any trees on the planes, nor was the grass particularly long; and while it was hemmed in by the same mountains which defended Axel from the South and East, it was still more than a large enough area to serve as a hunting ground. Which was convenient, considering the sheer number of monsters which inhabited it.

"It's actually the same quest that Kazuma and the others did first." Doug replied, breathing heavily himself, Stray Cat once more on his shoulder.

"Giant Frogs? The very same ones that look rather funny, but are actually a deadly plague on the land and its residents?"

"Toads actually," he corrected me, "and yes, the very same."

I stood up, making sure to crack my back as I did. "So what's the plan here then?" I asked, glowing with a menacing purple corona as Killer Queen faded into existence behind me.

"I'm thinking we'll treat this like an RPG grind." Doug responded. "I'll form a solid air bubble around myself with Stray Cat then go and aggro as many of them as possible; they won't be able to get me with their tongues so long as I keep the shield up. Then, once we've gathered them all together, I'll try and trap them all in another bubble so you can have Killer Queen turn it into a bomb."

"That sounds really well thought-out, Doug." I complimented him. "It's a great plan…"

Doug narrowed his eyes. "Why doesn't you saying that fill me with confidence?"

"EXCEPT FOR THE FACT I HAVE A BETTER ONE!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, my voice carrying over the hills.

The ground began to rumble, various mounds of earth rising and breaking open on the hills as the Toads, which were each thrice the height of a grown man and almost two-thirds as wide discounting their leg-span, came up from their homes to investigate the noise. Beside me, the scotsman let out a long sigh. "I don't want to watch this…"

I couldn't help but grin at that.

I looked over my shoulder, locking gazes with Killer Queen, and a mutual understanding passed between us. I willed my Stand to raise its left hand, and a mass of dark-purple light formed in its palm. Over the course of a few seconds, the light coalesced into a spherical shape, growing into a round object in Killer Queen's hand.

When the light faded, it left behind a blue-plated hemisphere with a brown knob on its crown and tank treads on either side of it, turning it into a vehicle. Embedded on its designated front was a raised cat-skull similar to the shapes on Killer Queen's belt, with the addition of a golden, downward-facing dagger design on its forehead, a jaw with teeth similar to a vampire's and a short spike as a nose.

"Behold, Doug!" I announced, unable to keep my grin from spreading even wider. "Killer Queen's second bomb! A mobile, automatic bomb that will follow its target 'till the end of time, no matter where they go... **[Sheer Heart Attack!]"**

Doug groaning was music to my ears.

"Sheer Heart Attack, your target…" I pointed to the Giant Toads that were beginning to hop towards us. "Is **them.** Killer Queen," I called, "if you would do the honors…" Willing my Stand into action, Killer Queen reared its arm back, then - with speed that transcended human eyesight - it tossed Sheer Heart Attack directly at one of the Toads.

The resulting explosion, and the multitude that followed, put an honest-to-god smile on my face.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Doug's POV_

 _Two Hours Later_

I stared at the landscape before me, my arms crossed, my expression inscrutable. Stray Cat had tried to mimic me, but didn't quite seem to know how to bend its leaves properly, leaving it to instead sit on my shoulder and stare forward in a deadpan while its tail swished gently from side to side.

Starting at the leftmost point in my field of view and then sweeping my gaze over to the right, I took in the scene. The cratered earth; the clumps of dirt; the scorched grass; the furrows and tread-marks in the grass. Rolling Hills looked like a warzone. Largely because it _was_ one.

Sheer Heart Attack trundled after another toad, implacable and unstoppable in its pursuit, while Stray Cat and I watched. No sooner had the device come close to the toad than it detonated in a towering cloud of smoke and cinders, moving on and leaving an obviously dead monster behind it.

I added another tally mark to the mental scoreboard I was using to keep track, putting Dylan's kill-count at thirty four.

A rippling air-front, the displacement wave of something large moving quickly, broke over my back, and I closed my eyes as Stray Cat turned to face behind me. Looking through my Stand's eyes was something I had been sure I'd be capable of, and it was nice to be validated as I stared at the giant toad hopping forward from behind me.

" **Kazedan."** I commanded, and Stray Cat's petals swirled into a shape like the mouth of a cannon before the air around us was drawn inside it. The air filled the container, packing itself tighter and tighter and swirling faster and faster, until in a few seconds the bulb contained a spinning, atmospheric cannonball.

Then it fired.

Unlike the attacks Stray Cat had managed on its own in the show, the shots it fired under my command were rocket-fast, covering the gap between where I stood and where the toad was advancing from in under a second. The densely-packed payload of air molecules dug into the monster's stomach, its rotation twisting the flesh there as it bit deeper, before it lost cohesion and detonated, expanding rapidly as it re-assumed its natural volume. The pressure wave ruffled my hair and levelled the grass in concentric circles around the toad, while the monster itself was lifted off its feet for a moment before it came crashing down on its back.

I knew from prior testing that the shockwave from the detonation would have already killed it out of hydrostatic shock, which the creatures were even more vulnerable to than humans through the same high-water-content flesh and fat which gave them their immunity to blunt weapons. "Nicely done." I praised the little Stand, opening my own eyes and reaching up to scratch underneath Stray Cat's chin with my right hand, drawing a purr from it as it happily closed its eyes.

"That puts my own tally at twenty five." I noted, turning at the sound of another detonation to see Dylan's thirty-fifth toad go up in smoke. ' _That should do it for now.'_ I decided, glancing up at the sun. ' _It'll be twilight soon, and we still need to get our reward money from the guild and then get ourselves some rooms somewhere.'_ "Dylan!" I called, attracting the teen's attention. "That's us done enough for now - let's go get our pay and find some place to sleep!"

"Alright then." Dylan replied, Sheer Heart Attack dematerializing into purple light and returning to Killer Queen's left hand. "I kinda wanted to get to the forty mark, but I suppose-"

On the crown of the next hill over, a toad suddenly appeared as it hopped over the rise, bringing into our view where it had been previously concealed by the slope. As it hung in mid-air, my eyes only beginning to widen, its mouth opened wide to reveal a coiled pink tongue that launched forward like a rocket toward Dylan's exposed back.

' _Two metre separation; more than thrice my operational range.'_ I noted in the split-second I had to react. ' _Kazedan requires prep time and travel time; my speed isn't enough to get me in range in time.'_ I didn't have enough time to do anything, and I knew it even as Stray Cat began to curl closed and I went to step forwards-

But then, my Stand's stats weren't anything really special. Killer Queen on the other hand?

 _It was already moving._

The pink humanoid burst into existence out of Dylan's back, its hand closing around the tongue and bringing it to a complete halt half a metre from Dylan. It barely even moved as it absorbed the momentum.

The eternal frozen moment which I had slipped into as the toad appeared vanished into time's normal flow, and I stumbled to a halt as Dylan turned to stare down the length of pink tongue at the toad. It seemed to be trying to retract its tongue - not that Killer Queen was acknowledging it at all.

The blond reached up with his left hand, laying it on the end of the pink flesh, and kept staring into the toad's eyes as he spoke. " **Hakai."** A flurry of crackling red energy seemed to spread from his hand like electricity, dancing up the toad's tongue to its main body; and, once it was there, the toad started to disappear.

Its flesh glowed bright orange and then faded away into cinders and ash, spiralling into the air as large swathes of its body burned away, starting from the outside and working inwards. Only a few seconds after Dylan had spoken, all that remained was its tongue and a pillar of smoke.

My friend tossed the length of flesh onto the grass beside him, Killer Queen doing the same, leaving it to also vanish in a cloud of sparks as the mucus on his hand also seemed to burn away. Then, he turned to look at me again. "Thirty-six...I guess that's enough for today."

"...Right." I agreed, turning to head back to Axel. "That's enough." ' _There's really no middle ground with this guy...'_

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

When we re-entered the guild hall (I went first to make sure Darkness wasn't there), we drew every eye from the benches, as well as the serving staff.

Whispers started spreading as we headed to the wall of serving windows, where Luna quickly headed after seeing we were back, taking her seat and managing to put on a convincing smile as we approached. "Welcome back!" She greeted us. "Did you manage to complete the elimination quest?"

I nodded, producing my registration card from my back pocket and handing it over as Stray Cat looked smug on my shoulder. "Yeah; we both went...eh...a bit over five, though."

"Well that's fine," she assured me, "this particular elimination quest is mostly just a notice. It pays per completion at 5,000 Eris per toad killed, and can be taken as many times as you want during the mating season. The reward is paid for by the mayor's office since it technically counts as a public service.

"Of course, you also get a percentage of the money that craftsmen and chefs pay for the corpses." She continued. "There's a certain amount deducted to pay the labourers we have sweep the areas to cart them away, as well as for the guild itself, but at this time of year when the toads are in their prime, it's still an average of 17,000 Eris per toad.

"Now, let's see…" She murmured, tapping a corner of the card and causing the writing on it to wriggle and change, revealing a list with a single item and a number beside it. "Giant Toads killed…" She blinked a couple of times, then looked up. "Twenty-five…" She said, almost to herself, before shaking her head and smiling again. "That's a very impressive number for a level one adventurer; I can see you don't waste time."

I smiled, rubbing the back of my head as she handed my card back. "Well, that's five completions so you've earned yourself 125,000 Eris for now, and as the corpses are sold you'll get your cut of the earnings there. Make sure to check with me at least every couple of days, alright?"

I nodded, storing the information away, and Luna turned to Dylan, holding out her hand a little hesitantly. "So, how about you mister Anderson?" With just a little hesitation, Dylan handed over his own card, and Luna repeated the tap she had given mine. "Giant Toads killed…" Her voice trailed off, and she stared at the card for a few moments before looking back up a bit shakily. "...Thirty-six."

There was a _crash_ from further into the hall, and glancing over my shoulder I could see that someone had just fallen backwards off their bench.

"T...that's a new record for the first day…" Luna continued, shaking slightly as she gingerly handed the card back to Dylan. "C-congratulations; you've earned yourself 175,000 Eris." Shaking herself, she stood up, heading back around the side of the wall to head for the upper floor. "I'll just go and get your payments…"

As she walked away, Dylan and I found ourselves the focus of most of the hall's attention. It was a bit uncomfortable to have all those eyes on us, and I found myself getting a bit twitchy as whispering broke out, becoming gradually more heated until someone finally got out of their seat.

He was a big guy. Heavily muscled too, which was obvious because instead of a shirt or armour, he wore black metal pauldrons with an attached high collar that were secured to his heavy trousers by light-purple straps like suspenders and white armguards. His head was shaved except for a reddish-brown mohawk, as well as a short beard that started at his ears and followed the line of his jaw while being paired with a moustache composed of two separate lines which boxed in his lips without joining each other or his beard.

"So uh...you're the new members of the guild." He stated/asked awkwardly, holding himself like he didn't know what to do with himself as we both nodded slowly. "Well...uh...we just wanted to welcome you." He continued, looking a bit more confident as neither of us reacted negatively - though he did keep glancing at Dylan. "It's pretty incredible that we have two Unique Skill users here...oh, and congratulations on setting a new record."

I let out a breath, my tension leaving with it. ' _He was just giving the welcome. He must have been the one left holding the short straw.'_ "Well, thanks for the welcome." I smiled at him, extending a hand. "I'm Douglas Macintosh, but I prefer Doug."

"I'm Arakuremono." He replied, relaxing as well as he shook my hand. "I'm a Warrior, but I hope to become a Berserker soon."

"Seems fitting." I noted, feeling the strength of his grip, and he grinned.

"Yeah; Ma always said I was born for it."

"Well, I wish you success." I told him, before looking sideways to Dylan. "This is my friend Dylan; he and I are a party."

"Yo." Dylan said, waving hello.

I glanced around rather obviously, then leaned in and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "He has a terrifying ability," I admitted, "but he's not really a bad guy. Just…" I searched for a word. "Well...a bit excitable."

Arakuremono sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I guess I was being a bit obvious…"

"It's perfectly understandable." I told him. "I mean, his ability scares the shit out of _me_ \- but he's not a very scary person." ' _Normally…'_

"It's funny that you say that, when your ability perfectly negates mine." Dylan countered, crossing his arms.

"Not _perfectly,_ " I demurred, "but I guess you've got a point."

"Fair enough."

"You two are pretty good friends, aren't you?" Arakuremono mused, looking between us. "You're really not like the other guys with Unique Skills who've come through…"

I perked up. "You mean we're not the first two you've seen?"

Arakuremono - who I decided to tag as 'Kure' in my head - shook his head. "Since Axel is a fairly peaceful place that has access to some areas with relatively weak monsters, we get a lot of adventurers starting here." He explained. "And for some reason, we also seem to get a lot of weirdly-dressed foreigners with powerful weapons or strange skills."

I sighed internally. ' _Aqua hasn't even been trying for subtlety, huh? Somehow I'm not surprised.'_

"But a lot of them are really overconfident punks with no idea what the world's like, usually with their heads up their asses." The warrior complained, folding his arms and glowering at nothing in particular. "They look down on all of us normal adventurers and treat us like children, even though they're a lower level than we are."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Dylan's jaw grinding back and forth, his fists clenching at his sides. "That's some serious bullshit." He said, seeming to get more and more pissed off. "Some random-ass teens shouldn't have any right to lord over you all. Please tell me you don't seriously take their shit?"

Letting out a frustrated sigh, Kure shrugged. "Well, we don't really have much choice. Even if they're low-level, they have advantages that could be really useful against the devil king, so we've got to play nice and make sure they hang around."

I grunted. ' _Of course - all of those kids are probably the Japanese teens that Aqua sent here, who don't have the foreknowledge we do. This would be just like becoming a Main Character to them, so they'd treat everyone around them like NPCs. What a deplorable attitude…'_ "Well, I think I speak for myself _and_ Dylan when I say that I don't think we're much different from any adventurer here." I told him. "I mean, we have our abilities - but it almost feels wrong, since we were g...born with them. We haven't had to work as hard to get anywhere."

I looked past Kure to the rest of the hall, seeing that many of the people there had turned to look at his, craning their necks to put their ears closer. Near the back, I could see several figures in dark clothing mouthing words to the other members of their table. ' _Probably Thieves; they must have some kind of Listen skill.'_

"Everyone has their own reason for becoming an adventurer." Dylan said slowly, picking his words. "For me, it's because this is the only way I think I can go about making a difference; it's a selfish reason that I can only have because I have an ability I didn't earn which gives me an advantage over anyone who isn't lucky enough to have something like it.

"But you - _all_ of you - have stood up without that advantage and you've made a difference on your own merits. A lot of you are probably doing this to support yourselves and your families, risking your lives for others' benefit.

"And that's a more amazing power than anything I have."

As Dylan finished, I spoke up again. "We're new adventurers who don't know much about the area, the state of the world or the kind of things that can benefit or oppose adventurers; so, we'll be counting on you." I inclined my head. "Please take care of us."

Dylan followed my example. "Yes, please."

There were a few seconds of silence - then Kure put his hands on his hips and threw his head back to laugh. "You guys are really alright!" He declared, clapping a hand down on each of our shoulders. "Welcome to the gates of hell, you two!" He winked. "I'll look forward to watching your radiance!"

I smiled up at him, while behind the warrior I could see the various tables of people read the mood and jump to their feet, many raising flagons or mugs.

"WELCOME TO THE ADVENTURER'S GUILD!"


	2. Chapter 2

_Kazuma's POV_

' _Man, girls in fantasy worlds really are different, aren't they?'_ I thought to myself as I approached the window that we'd just been directed to. ' _She looks like one of those Western actresses!'_

You would never have found a woman like her in Japan. It would be impossible! Yet there was such an impossibly proportioned woman sitting behind the window in a place like an Adventurer's Guild...life in a fantasy world was looking better and better by the second! Sure, I had an idiot, crybaby Goddess instead of some kind of awesome power...but I'd struck a blow for gender equality, so there was that.

...Dammit, but I really wished I'd asked for something cool now. Everyone in this building had some kind of crazy armour or weapon. Even that guy who directed me to the registration was built like some kind of Barbarian character from an RPG! Yet here I was in my tracksuit, without some kind of really showy magical sword or anything…

Well, so long as no rumours spread about Aqua's meltdown when we got here, I should be fine. After all, I'd been preparing all my life for this! This new beginning, where I could finally live the life I should as an adventurer! Money, fame, power...I could have everything I'd ever wanted!

Not even Aqua's rock-bottom opinion of me could bring me down for long! Nothing would get between me and my destiny. My time had come, and I would start down this road to glory by registering as an adventurer!

"Hello!" The woman behind the counter greeted me, smiling. "What can I do for you today?"

I swallowed, hoping it wasn't too noticeable. ' _Crap, I haven't ever spoken to someone this pretty before...okay, Kazuma, play it cool! Remember, this is your chance to make a good first impression!'_

"Um, we'd like to become adventurers." ' _Okay, could have been better, but it could have been worse. Man, I'm actually speaking with a fantasy-world woman! THIS IS AWESOME!'_

"I see." The woman nodded, still smiling. "Well, in that case you'll first need to pay the two-thousand Eris registration fee."

I smiled back, buoyed on the fact that such a beautiful woman was smiling at me. "Sure, sure…" Then her words registered. "Huh? Registration fee?" ' _Oh._ Shit. _Aqua didn't give me any starting items!'_

There was a sinking feeling in my chest as I turned to look at the Goddess over my shoulder. ' _Okay, okay, so she might have been a total bitch and totally useless so far...but surely she's not_ completely _worthless? I mean, she's a Goddess - she has to be totally loaded, right?!'_ I lowered my voice a bit. "Do you have any money?"

Admittedly, I hadn't thought I'd have to start my new life asking for money from Aqua, but there was no shame in it, right? In every RPG you had to get your starting gold from somewhere, and no one ever got shamed for that, right?! So I'd just get some money from Aqua, and then my pride would be totally fine-

My heart fell to somewhere down near my shoes as Aqua shook her head. "You dragged me here without any warning." She replied, her face totally straight, apparently not realising that every word she spoke was a dagger in my heart that tore at the glorious tapestry of my dreams. "Of course I don't have any money."

My emotional reaction to hearing her words was a complicated one that not even I fully understood. But rising above the waves of despair, shame, anger, crushing disappointment and shards of broken dreams was one thought in particular. ' _This girl is really useless…'_

 **(BGM - 'Roundabout', by Yes: START)**

As I cast my eyes around frantically for anything that could give me a hope of paying the registration fee (Eris, what were Eris? Were they like Yen? They had to be, right? After all, two-thousand dollars would be way too much just to register for a job! Right?!), my eyes fell on one table in particular. Or rather, they were drawn by the two figures sitting at it.

One was blond while the other had black hair. They both seemed quite tall even sitting down, and stood out for being fairly thin among the massively muscular guys all around the hall. Even more stand-out, however, were their clothes. A white t-shirt and tracksuit trousers for the blond and jeans under a light-blue t-shirt for the other guy; clothes that were unmistakably from Earth!

' _These guys must be other people that Aqua sent on to this world! But I thought she said she dealt with youths who died in Japan? That guy's blond - and they're both too tall! Is she so useless she can't tell the difference between Japanese and European?!'_ A flash of colour caught my eye from their table, and I suddenly found myself unable to look away from what I saw there.

' _...Stray Cat? STRAY CAT IS ON THAT TABLE?! WHAT THE FUCK IS STRAY CAT DOING HERE?!'_ The thought mostly consumed my mind, as I tried to process the existence of the feline plant that seemed to be lapping up water from a flagon set aside on the table for it. It was just in front of the guy with black hair, who had his back to me and seemed to be eating with one hand and absently stroking the Stand with the other.

As I was looking, I caught motion in the corner of my eye, and looking up I could see the blond staring...at me?! ' _No...beside me?'_ Yes, his gaze was locked directly on Aqua, with all the intensity of a raid boss locking aggro.

He pushed his chair back and stood up. The other guy at his table looked up and I thought he asked something, but the blond didn't acknowledge it. He just started moving - first walking, then upgrading to a run as he approached before jumping into the air and coming down towards Aqua with a fist cocked back. "GRIT YOUR TEETH BITCH!"

I didn't even think of getting in the way. I just did the only thing that came to mind - I yelled at the top of my lungs. "HOLY SHIT!"

Aqua turned around just in time to take a fist to the face and go rolling heels-over-head backwards into the wall of the registration counter, where she ended up sprawled upside-down in a crater shaped just for her. She hung there, apparently dazed completely out of her mind, as the blond guy raised his fist in front of him, clenching it tight. " _Damn_ that felt good!"

 **(BGM - 'Roundabout', by Yes: END)**

A second later he went from standing vertically to laying face-first on the floor of the hall as a thunderous _bang_ echoed off the walls. A groan sounded out from around where his face had become one with the wood as the guy with black hair got up from his chair, Stray Cat scampering up on to his shoulder, then walked over. Up close I could see green eyes, which didn't even flicker downwards as he walked over the guy on the floor, faint echoes of 'Ow' sounding with each footfall. The brunet stood silently in front of the lady at the counter, his expression inscrutable, his mind unknowable, and I found myself gulping-

Until he inclined his head to the blonde. "I'm _so_ sorry."

"It's...fine, Douglas." The lady replied, with the slightly slow air of someone still getting their brain back into gear. "I...ah...wasn't quite expecting that."

"I would have done if I'd noticed who had arrived, but I'm afraid I didn't have as close an eye out as I thought." The guy replied, lifting his head again and turning a rueful look on the guy embedded in the floor, still groaning slightly. "He's not normally like this, you know."

"...I'm sure…" The counter-lady said, with all the signs of not believing a word she said. "I don't suppose-?"

"We'll pay for the floor." The man assured her, before glancing at where Aqua was still embedded in the wall. "And the wall." He paused. "And the other wall."

The lady blinked. "The other wa-"

There was another thunderous _bang,_ and this time Aqua vanished from her indentation in the wall beside the counter window. A second later there was a rush of air to fill a suddenly-formed gap in the atmosphere and the sound of timber giving way at the other end of the building.

The guy's face didn't change at all. Even though the Stand on his shoulder looked smug, his expression remained completely straight. "Yes. Sorry. Dylan and I have...a bit of a history with her. We'll try and keep it out of the guild hall next time."

"...Well, so long as you pay for the damages…" She managed dazedly, and the guy nodded again.

"Of course." With that, he turned around and reached down, grabbing the other guy around the shoulders. One heaving motion later the blond was vertical again, apparently none the worse for wear after his introduction to the floorboards. "You done?" The brunet, whose name was apparently Douglas, asked conversationally.

The blond seemed to consider for a moment. "Can I get one more?"

Douglas shrugged. "Sure, just don't do it in here."

"I'll save it for later then." The blond declared, before turning back to the table he had been sitting at before. The brunet made to follow, paused, then reached to his waist and a brown pouch on his belt that I hadn't paid attention to before. He retrieved his hand with a handful of golden coins and my eyes bulged.

' _Unfair! This is unfair! I started this new life with a totally worthless goddess who bitches at everyone, but these guys got a Stand and some kind of shounen protagonist strength upgrade?! And that guy has so much money! Is that the standard starting package?!'_

That was the moment when I decided. In this new life...I would _definitely_ exploit the hell out of these lucky bastards.

A second or so after Douglas handed several coins over to the woman at the counter, the doors to the hall burst open, revealing a dishevelled Aqua who looked like she was halfway between becoming a flailing mess and calling down divine retribution. "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING TO THE GREAT AQUA-SAMA, YOU DAMN HOMO-NEET?!"

The blond stopped cold halfway through taking a step. His leg hung in the air for just a moment, before the foot was put down almost delicately. With deceptive grace the blond turned, his eyes hidden behind his fringe. He didn't make a sound, not a word, not a scuff of shoe on wood, but it seemed to me that something was thrumming through the air. It was like an ominous background hum, growing louder as a roiling corona of evil-looking purple light flickered into life over his skin, outlining him in an inhuman glow.

I swallowed to try and hydrate my parched throat. ' _What's with this guy…? He seems so menacing all of a sudden-!'_

The purple light surrounding the blond suddenly seemed to swell, a great portion of it peeling away from his back and floating in mid-air behind him. As I watched it began to twist and collapse in on itself, coalescing into a shape that I quickly recognised as being humanoid. As it did so, I almost jumped out of my skin when the blond broke his eerie silence. "My name is Dylan Anderson. I'm eighteen years old. I currently live on the second floor of the local inn, the one not too far from the Adventurers' Guild. I have taken on the role of 'Thief' since joining said guild. Recently I died, and happened to make a mistake when selecting a blessing to have. Because of the laziness and neglect of a Goddess, my friend was killed along with me."

Aqua blinked. "I already know who you are, homo-NEET. Why are you introducing yourself again? Did whatever made you strike a wondrous goddess like me screw with your memory, too?"

I felt my eyebrow twitch. ' _Aqua...doesn't she realise that he's building up to something?! This is the exact thing characters in anime do right before they unleash their full power!'_ I blinked as something occurred to me. ' _Actually, this one sounds kind of familiar.'_ I narrowed my eyes at the shape coalescing beside the blond, Dylan. ' _And is it me, or is that shape_ also _familiar…?'_

"What I'm saying Aqua, is that you are the direct cause of my friend's death. And thus, you owe both him and I a debt." The black and purple wisps began to take form, a large, pink figure forming at Dylan's side.

I recognised it instantly. ' _Bullshit! That's bullshit!'_ I screamed internally, though externally I wasn't fit to do much more than stand and stare. ' _Not just Stray Cat but Killer Queen too?! Aqua gave KILLER QUEEN to THAT guy?! This is totally unfair - no, it's completely irresponsible! Who made this useless idiot a Goddess?! IN WHAT UNIVERSE IS THIS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN?!'_

It was fast, so fast that I couldn't even see the Stand move. In a single instant, Aqua was hit directly in the face with a loaf of bread that Killer Queen must have picked up from an adjacent table.

"WHAT ARE YOU THROWING AT THE GREAT AQUA-SAMA?!" She demanded, snatching the bread from off her face. "BREAD?! What's wrong with you?! You damn homo-NEET, don't throw things at other people just because you wished for your other loser friend to be dead-!"

"I'm afraid you're dumber than you look," Dylan said, raising his right hand, "if you've already forgotten the power you gave me."

' _Move! I've got to move! My new life can't end here just because Aqua's an idiot!'_ I chattered internally, rapidly looking back and forth before choosing to do a dive-roll through one of the empty windows on the counter. Unfortunately I got stuck basically lying down on the counter and had to drag myself through with my hands. ' _I seriously hope no one saw th- WAIT, WHY AM I WORRYING ABOUT THAT?! HE'S ABOUT TO USE KILLER QUEEN!'_

Dylan's face split into a grin, his thumb coming down onto the first joint of his index finger with an audible _click._ "Killer Queen has already touched that bread."

Aqua was instantly blown back as the loaf of bread exploded, flying ass over teakettle out the doors of the guild hall. Even before the last of the explosion's sound had died away crazed laughter could be heard resounding through the building as the blond threw his head back. Crouched behind the counter, I shivered as it washed over me. ' _Is this guy really crazy?'_ I asked myself. ' _He just turned a loaf into a bomb and threw it at someone, so he's got to be crazy, right?! Oh man, I don't have a Stand, or an Arrow, or even any kind of special power - how am I supposed to beat a Kira like this?! Dammit Aqua you worthless Goddess, what's with giving awesome powers to lunatics and getting me stuck with your useless self?!'_

I heard a low whistle, then the somewhat accented voice I recognised as belonging to the one called Douglas asked "You weren't actually trying to kill her, were you?"

The laughter trickled to a halt and when I poked my head up over the counter, Killer Queen was nowhere to be seen. "Nah, I just wanted to try and knock some sense into her. I doubt it worked, but I couldn't just let her get off scot-free after killing you."

There was a sigh from Douglas as he sat down at their table with his back to me. I might not have been able to see his face, but I _could_ see Stray Cat - and the Stand seemed to be drooping slightly. "I'm angry too." He admitted. "Angrier than I've ever been before in my life, angrier than I ever thought I could be. It would have been so easy to just use a Kazedan instead of a vacuum - to blow her head off right then and there...and frankly, that scares me."

There was silence for a moment, then Dylan spoke. "Y'know...I _could_ have some fun with Bites the Dust-"

" _No."_ Came the immediate response. "No. I can't do that. If I act like that thinking 'it's not like it'll matter anyway, it'll all be reset', then I'm making excuses. If I allow myself to go that far even once, it opens the door to doing it again. It would have been bad enough if I did that before, but now? With all that I can do?" He shook his head, Stray Cat rubbing its petals against the side of his face as if offering support. "No. Not even once; I _refuse_ to sink to that level."

There was another pause. "Well, I've already been there, done that and bought the t-shirt, so…"

"Y'know, I think you're supposed to have some kind of paradigm shift right now." Douglas complained. "See yourself in a different light, swear to change your ways, that kind of thing?"

"Boy, I've got _Killer Queen._ " Dylan declared, laughing again.

There was a final sigh from Douglas. "Well, that's fair enough." He leaned his head back a bit, apparently drinking from a flagon in front of him, before setting it down and speaking again. "So, since we just openly chatted about how we both died and were reincarnated loudly enough for the whole guild hall to hear it, how's about you use that complete lack of morals and let's try this again."

I blinked, glancing around the rest of the hall and realising that _yes_ , _everyone_ had been craning their necks to listen in on that conversation. ' _So wait, did he say all that_ knowing _he could be heard?'_ I wondered. ' _What kind of idiocy is that? How uncaring would he have to be? It's not like he can just erase everyone's mem-'_ I blinked again. ' _...She wouldn't have. Would she? Would she even have known the difference?'_ I considered Aqua, everything I knew about her. ' _Oh shit she would, she_ totally would _give someone the Requiem version of Killer Queen, that_ idiot!'

"Uh…" Dylan said slowly, "didn't you just give a little speech about not killing people out of anger or necessity?"

" _Other_ people." Douglas specified. "I never said anything about myself."

The blond paused, giving the brunet a speculative look. "...Are you sure about this?"

"Just get it over with."

Killer Queen began to coalesce behind Dylan once more, floating around to his side, and the blond shrugged. "Well, it's your choice I guess." I realised what was about to happen quickly, and considered trying to stop them - but I wasn't even a Koichi, and I damn well wasn't a Jotaro. " **[Killer Queen] - Bites the Dust!"**

 **Linebreak**

 _Dylan's POV_

I'm not normally one for introspection. Yet as the world consolidated itself once more from amidst the chaotic whirlpool of colours that **Bites the Dust** conjured, I have to admit to myself that I was becoming...different, to my usual self. I've only been a part of Konosuba's world for two days - yet in that time I've already begun to experience the kind of changes having a Stand can bring.

So far, _none_ of them have been positive.

Stands are normally a reflection of their user's spirit; a literal manifestation of their soul, given form and controlled with their fighting spirit. They are supposed to embody who their user is and often have powers based around who the user is as a person. The main exceptions were Requiem Stands, whose powers were based on what the user needed most at the time of transformation.

In my case, however, **[Killer Queen]** is far from a representation of who I am.

The Stand's original user, Yoshikage Kira, was a psychopathic serial killer with a hand fetish and the wish to live a quiet life. He was willing to do _anything_ to achieve his goals.

I bear about as much resemblance to Yoshikage Kira as I do to Cthulhu.

I'm an emotional high-schooler with little to no wish for conflict, still dealing with the fact that _I died two days ago._ That being the case, I shouldn't just be fine with using **Bites the Dust** to reset everything and avoid all consequences.

Yet I am. I feel next to nothing about destroying entire timelines at once, explicitly killing one person to initiate the effect - and _that scares me._

Doug mentioned a paradigm shift. I'm afraid that he might have a more relevant point than he knew.

Good thing I did a ton of theater in high school, because hiding this is going to be _hard._

 **Linebreak**

I blinked, the spectrum of light fading from my vision as my conscious snapped back into my body. I've got to say, using **Bites the Dust** is really fucking weird on the senses. The only thing I could compare it to is waking up after a lucid dream. I remembered everything that just happened, but I was now in the time _before_ it happened. It's rather… Bizarre.

Speaking of Bizarre, I had sent us back to just before I had gotten up and socked Aqua across her face. So that would mean…

Sure enough, Kazuma's gaze was locked right on Stray Cat. Said floral cat was blinking and looking around, looking severely confused about the whole ordeal...for about a second before it turned back to its bowl of water. "So, have you got it out of your system or are we going to have to do that again?" Doug asked, not doing a very good job of keeping his voice steady. He reached for his flagon, but let it go quickly when his hand shook so badly he almost dropped it.

"I've gotten it out of my system…" Fucking hell, he's really shook up about this. "Doug, are you alright?" He clearly wasn't, judging by how hard he was shaking. That fucking settles it, I'm never using **Bites the Dust** on him again.

"Good." He took a deep breath, holding it before he let it out again and Stray Cat rubbed up against the back of his hand. Doug quickly took the Stand into his arms and held it close, still breathing slowly. "I'm good. That was…" He shuddered - suppressing it a bit, but not well enough. "That was a lot different from the first time. I guess I was unconscious for the whole drowning bit, or that's what I think happened anyway, but that was…" He trailed off. Apparently, he couldn't find the words.

"Horrible?" I asked.

"Not strong enough." Doug replied. "Not _nearly_ strong enough. I don't think there's a word for how comprehensively fucking awful that felt."

As I said. _Never again._

It was at that moment that someone coughed beside our table. "Excuse me," began a somewhat accented voice, "but my friend and I just got in from _really far_ out of town. I wonder if you might have come the same way?"

Lo and behold, Kazuma had worked up the courage to approach our table - and by the sound of it, he was trying _pretty_ hard to be cool about it. Doug wasn't in any fit state to be speaking. So that left it up to me then… _great._

"Did you get the short end of the stick in life as well?" I asked, keeping it vague in case others in the guild were listening.

Kazuma, who looked a lot more Asian in person, nodded rapidly a few times. "Emphasis on the 'end'." He replied.

I might as well make conversation, after all this _is_ perhaps the greatest main character in anime I'm currently speaking to. "Yeah, it fucking sucks. But on the plus side, at least you've gotten a kickass power out of the whole deal, right?" I said, motioning to Stray Cat. "What did you end up picking? It took me ages to figure out what I wanted. "

Oh, did I say 'make conversation'? I meant fuck with him.

Kazuma's eyebrow twitched. "Uh...I... _draggedAquaherewithme._ " He ran the words so close together they were barely distinguishable from one another. He also muttered them, which made it even harder to tell what he'd said.

"Come again?"

"I...chose something really powerful!" He declared, with the air of a man who had just figured out how to deliver bad news in the right shape to avoid being shot for carrying it. "In fact, I chose something godlike!" He said it with such conviction, his hands on his hips and his nose a bit in the air, that he was almost believable. Though, seeing Aqua watching from the reception counter with a terminally bored expression kind of ruined his credibility. "What did _you_ choose?"

"Well that would ruin the surprise, wouldn't it?"

"He got a Stand too." Doug broke in from across the table. He was stroking Stray Cat now instead of just cradling it, the tension in his shoulders flowing away. When he reached out for his flagon this time, he managed to raise it to his lips with only a modicum of shaking. "We were kind of a...package deal, I guess."

"Can - can you not?" I asked, Doug ruining the thing I had going on.

"Your suffering fuels my recovery." He replied bluntly. "Besides, I get the feeling we're gonna get fucked over enough without starting any shit now. We're all gonna be stuck together for a _while_. We'd better get used to it."

"Fine…ruin my fun why don't you." I sighed, knowing he was right.

"So...are you actually going to say what it _is,_ or…?" Kazuma asked pointedly, trailing off at the end.

"Alright then." I sighed, leaning back in my chair and glancing Kazuma's way. "It's _this._ "

Killer Queen manifested in a flash of purple and black light, towering over the three of us. It gave Kazuma a black stare, its slitted eyes locked onto his.

Kazuma's face went through several shades of colour. Starting at his usual complexion, then turning a ghostly white, before shooting all the way back up to red while somehow seeming to hit green on the way through. "...That's bullshit." He whispered, sounding utterly incredulous. It seemed like there was a whole lot more being said behind his eyes, but it couldn't all fit into his mouth.

"It really is." I said, Killer Queen fading back into nothing. "Funny enough, it just happened to be random chance that we got these."

Kazuma's expression blanked. Or to be more accurate, it tried to portray so many things at once that the muscles all got tangled up and the resulting muscular train-wreck dropped him straight into deadpan. "Luck." He managed to say past whatever meltdown was occuring in his brain.

"Yep, luck." I said, a wide grin forming on my face. "We could have gotten any Stand, but we got _these_."

There was a _ping_ sound as a sphere of solid air bounced off my forehead, having been flicked my way from Doug's side of the table. "Don't rub it in." The other teen grumbled. "Save that for the aristocrats and the Demon Lord's army."

I sighed. "You're gonna make that a thing, aren't you?"

"I have infinite marbles and decidedly less than infinite patience." Doug replied. "Just you try and stop me."

I couldn't help but notice the confused look on Kazuma's face. "Just ignore us." I said, reaching into my pocket to pull a couple of Eris coins. "Here, you can register for the Guild with these."

Kazuma held out his hand with a smile. "Hey thanks! That'll make things easier." When I withheld dropping the coins in his hand, he gave me a confused look bordering on eye-twitching rage. "Oi. Are you gonna give me them or -"

"I'll give you these coins on _one_ condition." I said, locking my gaze on Kazuma. My tone was deadly serious, without an ounce of humor. "You don't give Aqua _any_ of these."

The Japanese teen blinked back at me, processing what I'd said, before grinning maliciously. "Got it." He agreed. Then he paused, glancing over his shoulder at the blue-haired goddess in question. "Though...how's she going to become an Adventurer then…?"

"I don't fucking care, she's gotta figure that out."

"If she wants to join the Guild, she can get the money herself." Doug declared, Stray Cat nodding decisively. "It's not like there's a dearth of jobs with low skill ceilings around here. Let her do a few hours' work for a change; it'll be good for her character."

"Are you sure that that trainwreck has any 'character' at all? Because she could've fooled me if she did." I replied, getting up from my seat.

"Most living things are more than fifty-percent water." Doug said, also standing up as he placed Stray Cat in its accustomed spot on his shoulder. "Aqua's just got more than usual, so her 'character' is as fluid as whatever counts for her brain."

"Want to do the Toad mission again? That'll be pretty easy. Plus it'll get us a lot more money."

Kazuma perked up like a bloodhound which had caught the scent of a truly succulent rabbit. "Wait, you can make money by dealing with _toads?"_

Doug and I both paused, then my friend quickly hid a devilish grin by coughing into his hand. "Yep." He agreed. "We just head out into the grass-lands, put a bit of a dent in the toad population, then come back and the Guild pays us for it. We'll even end up getting more money if someone buys the toads afterward for ingredients and such."

I nodded sagely. "Yep! It's the prefect mission if you want to earn a ton of money _very_ quickly." I'll play your little game Doug. This is gonna be _fun_.

 **Linebreak**

If there was one thing that was superhuman about Kazuma, it had to be his lungs. I don't think he's stopped screaming since the toads started to chase him.

"YOU ABSOLUTE _BASTARDS!_ " He screamed, just barely keeping ahead of the giant toad that had set its sights on him.

"It's just a toad Kazuma! Come on, you were so excited to do this mission! What happened?" I yelled back at him. I hadn't even brought out Killer Queen yet. This was just too damn funny!

"WHO EXPECTS THIS SHIT WHEN YOU SAY TOADS!?" He screamed back, just managing to parry the tongue that shot out at him with a sword we'd picked up on the way to the hills.

"Rule one of life in a fantasy world!" Doug called. "Expect the unexpected!" Stray Cat was waving its tail of roots where it was perched on his shoulder, its sharp eyes tracking the large toad. It licked its lips. To a cat, after all, prey was prey - no matter how big it had grown.

I grinned, thoroughly enjoying his terror. "Alright, I should probably step in before he gets eaten."

Doug raised an eyebrow, then whistled. "Kazuma! You might want to duck!" Then, without waiting for a response, he glanced at Stray Cat. " **Kazedan."**

The Stand's petals began to swirl closed and I covered my ears as shimmering bubbles appeared over Doug's.

The resulting shockwave of the highly-compressed air detonating on the toad lifted the crouching Kazuma, who apparently had the sense to listen to Doug's command, into the air and in a fairly tall arc towards us. The ululating scream that marked his descent made me glad that I'd already covered my ears.

When he crashed head-first into the massive, springy bubble that Doug had formed just in front of us, I took my hands away. Blessed silence. Kazuma's face was stuck kind of deep in the rubberised air pocket to be screaming at any volume.

I turned away from the two, instead focusing on the other toads that had turned our direction. There were three of them, all staring at us with hunger in their eyes. I grinned, calling on the power that I had so recently acquired.

I was instantly covering in a menacing purple-black aura, but the familiar shape of Killer Queen didn't fade into existence. Rather its _legs_ did, appearing partially translucent as my own legs were sheathed in the Stand's limbs. Doug and Kazuma both turned to look, each obviously surprised to see my legs vanishing behind a facade of pink-plastic flesh with leather shoes.

I crouched for a moment, Killer Queen's legs moving in perfect sync with my own. I could feel the strength in them; how could I possibly miss something so overwhelming? It was the work of moments to draw that very strength into myself, and the moment I hit my peak I _launched_ myself at the Toads.

For a precious few seconds, I knew what it was like to fly.

I shot through the air fast enough that I had to peer through almost-closed eyelids as the wind rushed past. The group of toads I'd been aiming for, undoubtedly roused from their slumber in the hills by Kazuma's attempt at a sonic attack, all launched their tongues at me as I approached. Each fleshy projectile sailed harmlessly past me - I was going too fast for them to aim properly.

I still had all that speed when I hit the first creature with all the force of a missile, my foot slamming into its forehead with enough force to depress its flesh by a couple of inches. The toad didn't really move much, though; the damn things were almost flat-out immune to blunt force trauma equivalent to anything less than a meteor falling on them.

Against my power, on the other hand, they had _no_ defence.

There was a small flash of purple at the point where my foot had struck and the toad was turned into a bomb. I formed a detonator with my hand, slamming my thumb down onto my forefinger with a soft **click**.

The resulting explosion shot me up into the air, giving me a clear view of the other two toads. I preemptively summoned Killer Queen's arm over my own in time to catch the tongue that had shot up at me. With a ripple of flame-coloured light that raced down the fleshy appendage to its main body and one more _click_ the second toad exploded just like the first, the smoke from its demise curling away on the wind in seconds.

Killer Queen's head, neck, right shoulder and right arm bloomed over my own right-hand side, reaching into my pocket and retrieving an Eris Coin. I willed it to turn said coin into a bomb - not like the bombs I'd made so far, though. This one I willed to explode on contact.

With a thought, Killer Queen flung the coin at the final toad. The small marker of currency sliced through the air at speeds no normal human eye could follow, whistling all the way…and the very instant it hit the toad, the creature was engulfed in the same crackling light that had claimed its brethren, then swelled, burst and disintegrated in a third and final explosion.

I was able to hang in the air for a moment as gravity wound down the upward acceleration from my first explosion, admiring my work. Then I ran out of momentum and started dropping back to the ground. I didn't worry at all; all I needed was a mental _flex_ and Killer Queen's feet and legs once more overlayed my own, extended and loose in readiness.

I hit the ground with an almighty **bang** , the dirt and grass beneath my feet exploding outward from the force as my knees bent to absorb the force. I barely felt anything more than I would have done jumping off a wall; Killer Queen's supernaturally durable body softening the shock to the point of irritation rather than fatality.

I got up, dusting off my clothes and turning back to Doug and Kazuma. Doug just shook his head at me, letting out a small sigh. Kazuma, on the other hand, looked _very_ envious.

"So…that brings my count up to what, thirty-nine?"

 **Linebreak**

 _Doug's POV_

We walked back into town as a group of three. Kazuma was hanging back a bit, walking behind us deep in thought. If I had to guess, he was wondering about the realities of being an Adventurer with his handicap. He'd come into this world expecting to be the new 'main character', yet running into us on the first day - seeing the gap between what we could do and what he could do when faced with what amounted to trash mobs - had disabused him of that notion.

Being an Adventurer wasn't an easy life. It meant _risking_ your life every time you went out into the field and it meant long hours of combat. It paid well and you'd often gain respect among your peers if you did well, but Adventurers were so widespread in this world that only the very best were seen as being more than, basically, common labourers.

He had a lot to think about.

The toad count now was a grand total of fifty for Dylan and forty for me. Another 125,000 Eris to add to our total, bringing us to somewhere like 415,000 total considering the 10,000 Eris down-payment we'd made on room and board at the Inn. There'd be no risk of being kicked out for at least a season even if we hit some dire financial straits and couldn't dig our way out. Not that I expected anything like that to happen - especially considering all the toad corpses we stood to get paid for upon purchase - but I didn't trust this world not to screw us over somehow.

"Keep the sword." I called over my shoulder (the one Stray Cat wasn't sleeping on). "It's nothing special, but consider it your starting weapon. Since you were our…" I paused, trying to find some polite, dignified way of saying 'bait'. "... _Scout,_ " ' _Nailed it.'_ "you'll get...twenty-percent of the overall pay."

Kazuma looked up sharply. "I almost got _eaten_ , _more than once_ , and you tell me that's only worth _twenty-percent?!"_ He growled, quickly walking to catch up with us and jabbing a finger into my chest. "Hell no! That's bullshit! What kind of business are you running?! What kind of shitty hazard pay is that?!"

"Twenty percent is roughly 25,000 Eris, basically 25,000 yen." Dylan said.

Kazuma blinked, his eyes unfocusing as he thought, then he scowled again. "That's only three or four days' pay at a convenience store!"

' _He drives a hard bargain.'_ I noted. ' _Then again, I guess he has to.'_ "The whole 'get up in your face and ask if you're an idiot' thing will probably work on a lot of people." I told him. "I mean you'd have to be stupid to try it on nobility or something unless you have them on the back foot, but you're getting the hang of it already."

I considered. "Okay, this time around you get forty percent - consider it your starting wealth since Aqua's such a cheapskate for a big spender." Kazuma seemed more satisfied with that. "Now c'mon, the sooner we show Luna our cards the sooner we can get paid and the sooner you can get to finding someplace you can stay."

We'd made it up the main street to the Guild Hall by that point, and Kazuma and I followed Dylan inside. "It's a bit loud for this time of...day…" I noted, trailing off as I discovered _why._

Aqua, dressed in the uniform of the hall's servers, was running around the place with a tray delivering orders. Whenever she stopped at a table she'd pause for a few moments and say something, often drawing a laugh, or do tricks with whatever the table's denizens were drinking. She did it all with a slightly vapid smile that indicated she was probably at least part-way drunk...or that she was overdoing the cheer to hide whatever mix of apocalyptic fury and childish displeasure fuelled her existence.

Hell, it could be both.

As the door closed behind us, Aqua placed the last of the drinks on her tray down on the table that had ordered them then turned to face the doorway. "Welcome to the Adventurer's Guil-" She began, smiling cheerily with her eyes closed to enhance the effect. Then she opened her eyes and saw the three of us standing in the doorway.

There was a moment's pause as Aqua's expression became far more brittle and the hefty wooden tray in her hands started to creak from the force exerted on it. " _Oh, did something just walk through the door?"_ She asked, mostly to herself it seemed. " _No, that can't be it, because if something_ had _walked through the door it could have been the worthless NEETs who so degraded the great Aqua-sama and then left her to_ wait tables like a COMMON SERVANT!"

Kazuma apparently had the good reflexes to duck as the hardwood tray spun through the space where his neck had been a moment earlier, crashing through the doors and continuing on across the street. A series of crashes and curses marked its path as it kept on going - but most of our attention was on the goddess who was stalking towards us. She was still smiling...but the malicious aura she was emanating and the way she pulled up the sleeves of her uniform killed the cheery image dead.

"Aqua you crazy goddess, don't kill me after having me reincarnated!" Kazuma yelled as he stood up straight again - just in time for Dylan and I to smartly sidestep Aqua's approach as the goddess reached out and grabbed Kazuma's collar with both hands. "Grk!"

" _KA-ZU-MA!"_ She growled, something that looked like steam leaking from the corners of her mouth and rising into the air. " _WHERE WERE YOU?! I turned around to try and get a drink at the bar, then when I checked again you were gone! I had to hang around the reception wondering where you'd gone until one of the waitresses asked if I was going to pay for my drink! Then I had to get a job to pay it off!"_

Kazuma was being shaken back and forth like a rag-doll at this point, drawing the attention (and laughter) of a good chunk of the hall's occupants. " _So where! Were! YOU!"_

"Oh, he was screaming like a bitch as a giant toad chased him around and tried to eat him." Dylan chimed in. "It was _hilarious."_

' _...Thank you once more for your incredible way with words, Dylan.'_ I sighed, Stray Cat gently butting its head repeatedly against my shoulder in what would equate to a human bouncing their head off a wall. ' _You are truly the master of socialisation and conflict resolution.'_ Out loud, I said "We took Kazuma along on a job so he could get some experience as an Adventurer. We were just going to go and get the pay so we can split it with him."

Aqua paused, Kazuma's head lolling back and forth on his neck as she suspended him in the air by his collar. "You mean the useless NEET actually earned money?"

"50,000 Eris." I replied. "More than enough for a couple of months at an Inn alongside meals and other expenses." I pointedly patted my own pouch of Eris, which I abruptly realised was going to need a size upgrade considering how stuffed it was already. Actually, there was an interesting idea; could I talk to Luna about a way of making Adventurer Cards function in a similar way to a debit card…?

A question for later.

The burning fury in Aqua's eyes, which had dimmed somewhat when Dylan and I interrupted her, died entirely to be replaced with an even _more_ terrifying kind of joy. "Well done, Kazuma!" She declared, placing the teen on his feet where he started swaying dangerously. "I should have known you'd never have just abandoned a goddess like myself. Sure you're disrespectful and kind of useless most of the time, but you really do have your moments!" She laughed to herself, and I could _see_ the sound boring into Kazuma's mind and lighting a fire there.

That fire was present in his eyes as he looked up at Aqua. Carefully controlled, perhaps, but I could see it. " _Right."_ He drawled, the underlying tone of his voice boding ill for Aqua...though it wouldn't surprise me if the goddess didn't catch that at all. " _I do have my moments."_

Dylan and I edged away as Aqua launched into a constant stream of complaints about everything which had irritated her during the day (which was almost _literally_ everything) and Kazuma just stood in place, obviously not listening...not that Aqua seemed to care. While they were otherwise occupied, Dylan and I handed in our cards to Luna, who checked the numbers on both of them.

"Alright, that's two completions for Dylan and three for Douglas." She declared. "A total of 125,000 Eris between the two of you." We nodded. "Oh - and I can't help but notice that neither of you has used any of your Skill Points." She continued. "Dylan, you're at level twenty currently. Douglas, you've reached level seventeen. Since you each get a skill point per level, each of you could probably get up to an Intermediary skill in your respective classes at this point."

"What about stats? Can we increase those as well?" Dylan asked.

Luna hummed. "Well, not with skill points." She told us. "Your stats will go up as you level up, as you learn passive skills and even if you just train to increase them in the usual way." She sighed. "Normally I'd show you on your cards, but there's no numbers on yours to look at."

"That's unfortunate." I noted. "But so long as our stats _are_ increasing, I suppose it doesn't really matter if we can't see the numbers." I considered my Adventurer's Card, noting that there were five options in the part marked 'Unlearned Skills'. I wasn't sure when I'd picked up the ability to read this world's script - or learned whatever omniversal tongue we were all speaking for that matter - but I guessed it was either a quirk of the world or a quirk of being reincarnated. Either way, it let me examine the options I had available. "I thought other people had to show you skills before you could learn them." I said aloud.

Luna chuckled. "Well, if you were an Adventurer class then that would be the case, but since you chose 'Mage' as your class that tree of skills is available for you to learn." She leaned over the counter a bit, pointing out the same part of my card that I'd been examining. "All of these are the most basic skills in the Mage class, which are mostly basic elemental spells. If you learn one and meet the level requirement you'll unlock the ability to learn the next skill along that line - from Beginner spells to Intermediate, then from Intermediate to Advanced and Advanced to Master."

"Do various classes work like that as well?" Dylan asked.

"They do." Luna nodded to Dylan. "Once you've met a level requirement and learned enough skills, you'll get the choice to upgrade your class. As a Thief, you can become a Rogue, Assassin or Scout if you learn the right skills for that class." She turned back to me. "As a Mage, you can become an Elementalist, a Summoner or a Druid."

I opened my mouth to ask another question and she raised a finger. "Hold on, just give me a moment…" She rummaged around below her counter-top for a moment before producing two booklets and handing one to each of us. "All the class skills and which ones unlock which jobs are in these." She told us, and I quickly opened the first page of mine to find a table of contents listing a surprisingly large number of job titles.

"When you meet the requirements to upgrade your job, come on back here and I'll show you how." She finished with a smile.

I returned it with one of my own. "Thanks, Luna." I'd go over this tonight - hopefully I could figure out what kind of skill path Dylan and I would each want to take.

Something poked me in the side, over my ribs, and I looked over to see Dylan was nudging me with his elbow and waggling his eyebrows. The overall effect was rather disturbing. I took a conspicuous step to the right, then completely ignored my friend's existence with the ease of substantial practice. Luna kept staring at his eyebrows for a moment before I coughed into my hand and she broke out of her horrified fascination. "Uh...I'll just go and get your pay for the day." She decided, backing slowly away from the counter.

"Thanks." I nodded again, turning to Dylan as Luna walked off to wherever the Guild kept its cash. "Dylan. Why didn't you tell me you had alien caterpillars instead of eyebrows?"

"Could you not? That would be great." He responded. "Just making a joke that's all."

"Riiiiiiight…" I drawled, shaking my head and glancing back at Kazuma and Aqua. The former had his arms crossed and was tapping his foot with increasing speed, while the latter was still talking his ear off. As I caught Kazuma's eye, he mouthed something at me...but I couldn't make any sense of it. Something told me that he was asking when he was getting the money, but his lips didn't sync up to that at all…

Or, they didn't in _English._

A couple of things clicked for me. "Huh." I muttered. "So it's some kind of magical effect, then…"

"So we can understand him? That's neat." Dylan said.

I broke from my musings on the magical effect that had surpassed language barriers to convey true understanding between humans to fix Dylan with a _look._ Stray Cat did likewise on my shoulder. "You've been talking with him all afternoon."

"Yeah, but his lips aren't in sync with what I'm hearing. He's speaking Japanese, but I'm hearing English."

"You noticed it too, then." I nodded. "It must be the same with us - in fact, it's probably the same with the native people." I paused. "Actually, how far must this go? Do people here ever actually learn to speak in the way we do? If this effect is some kind of planet-wide spell or something, does that mean that even small children can get their meanings across without needing to be taught? And what about other creatures, or at least sentient ones?"

"That's an interesting thought, it might just affect anyone reborn into the world though. I'd imagine the people born here have their own language."

"Must do." I agreed. "Well, it's something to think about later." I decided as Luna returned, once more carrying a tray with coins and notes on it.

"Here you go." She smiled, depositing the tray on the counter. "This is the 125,000 Eris for the job completion," she pointed out the stack of coins and notes on the left side of the tray, "and this is another 170,000 from the toads that were sold yesterday."

I looked at the money on the tray and then at the pouch at my side. "I'm...going to need something to carry it in."

"Well, I can sell you a Bag of Holding for 20,000 Eris." Luna told me. "They're very good for storing things you find in dungeons, when you're out hunting, or even just for carrying your equipment with you."

"Can I see one?" I asked.

"Of course." She nodded. "Give me just a moment…"

It only took her a couple of minutes to come back from retrieving the bag, and in the meantime I counted 75,000 Eris out from the amount on the tray and beckoned Kazuma over. "It's half again what you were promised, but consider it an investment." I told him. "We're all in the same boat here, after all, and you're gonna need all the help you can get."

Kazuma nodded firmly. "This isn't quite how I thought all of this was going to go," he admitted, "but I refuse to let this world get the best of me! This is my new life, and I'm going to become so rich that no-one can call me a NEET again!"

I blinked, then shrugged. "Well, it's good to have goals, I guess."

As Kazuma headed for the door out of the hall, Aqua following him, Luna returned with what looked like a leather satchel in her hands. "This is the basic bag that we sell to merchants and adventurers who need a bit more pack space." She told me, opening the bag and tilting it to show what looked like a fairly large room inside. "You can fit almost anything through the mouth of the bag and-"

She was cut off for a moment when the doors to the Guild suddenly burst open, smacking Kazuma right in the face and knocking him into Aqua before they both crashed into someone's table. Standing in the doorway was a familiar figure in a yellow surcoat and white armour, her blonde ponytail flying dramatically with what must have been residual momentum from a running start.

Lalatina Ford Dustiness, better known as Darkness, stood in the doorway taking large breaths and looking around the room with all the ferocious energy of a woman possessed. It took her approximately a second to lock onto Dylan with all the inherent finality of a heat-seeking warhead. Then she raised her arm, pointing straight at my friend with as much energy and as much gravitas as any Phoenix Wright character could possibly summon. "Ah-ha! So you _are_ here!"

Dylan had frozen up for a moment as Darkness focussed in on him. As I watched (and took another decent step sideways) however, he seemed to overcome his paralysis and grinned sharply. Glancing over at me, he mouthed 'Watch this!' then turned back to the Crusader standing dramatically in the doorway.

"Uh… Yeah?" Dylan said, faking confusion. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

-x-x-x-

Across the Kingdom of Belzerg where the Town of Axel was located, in the office of a woman with long black hair and violet eyes who was filling in paperwork, there was the sound of a bell chiming.

-x-x-x-

Darkness stared at Dylan, her finger dropping a bit. "D...do I _know_ you?" She asked, sounding bewildered. "You...you…!" She turned bright red, shifting a bit where she stood. "You laid your hands on me in the middle of the room and then made me explode!"

' _Wow. She really has a gift for saying things a certain way.'_

Dylan deadpanned. "Really? _Really?_ I think I would remember something like that. I'd think literally _everyone_ would remember something like that."

-x-x-x-

Another ringing sound, a bit louder this time. The woman frowned, getting up from her desk and eyeing the half-black, half-white device with wing-designed decoration and a golden bell through her red-rimmed spectacles. "What are you doing…?"

-x-x-x-

"I've never even _seen_ you before. This is quite literally the first time I've even got a look at you." Dylan said to Darkness. "And you just walk up and start accusing me?"

Darkness had gone an even brighter red, seeing that most of the people in the hall had turned around and were staring at her now. Some of them were chuckling to each other at their tables. "I...I…" She seemed to try and gather some of her courage again, raising a distinctly shaky finger. "I remember it! You burst in and knocked me down, then there was that...that _heat_ , and it rose so fast and-!"

She squirmed in place and I backed another couple of steps away. From Dylan or Darkness I wasn't entirely sure, I just wanted _away._

Dylan turned back to the rest of the guild, almost like an actor addressing the audience. "Did I? If I recall, I simply entered the building when I first got here. I'm sure you all can confirm for me."

There were nods throughout the hall.

-x-x-x-

At this point the ringing in the woman's office was nigh-continuous and still growing louder. The woman herself had resorted to bashing it with a heavy law book. "Please! Stop! Ringing!"

-x-x-x-

Darkness took an unsteady step backwards in the face of all the stares that were being levelled her way. I lowered my face into my hands as she shivered and squirmed - and _not_ with discomfort, as I was so distinctly cursed to know. "T...that is…!"

"Is what?! Unreasonable? False? All I've done is be on my best behavior in the guild so far, and you would come up and claim that I'm guilty of blowing you up? Then how are you standing here right now, I might ask? Your story isn't adding up…" Dylan shifted his body to the side, striking a pose and pointing his finger directly at Darkness.

"YOU MUST BE TRYING TO PICK ON THE NEW GUY, AM I RIGHT?!"

-x-x-x-

The black-and-white device exploded into a thousand pieces, knocking the woman off her feet though her thick lawbook protected her from the shrapnel.

-x-x-x-

"I...I…!" Darkness stumbled back several steps, arms around her middle, her face so brightly red it was just about glowing. As she went, Kazuma finally managed to get to his feet, focussing in quickly on the woman who had knocked him out cold for a few seconds.

"Oi!" He yelled, pointing right at her with all the fury of a social justice warrior. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

Darkness blinked, turning to see Kazuma storm up to her and jam his finger almost into her face. "What's the big idea throwing the doors open like that?! Are you stupid? Are you just some kind of idiot who doesn't think about what they're doing?!"

I blinked. "I think she might actually go nuclear at this rate." I commented to Stray Cat, who snickered. How a plant-cat snickers is beyond me - but it managed.

"Or maybe you just don't care about the people around you, huh?!" Kazuma continued, continuing to move forward as Darkness kept taking steps back. "What, do you think we're worthless? Are you so privileged you're looking down on the working class citizen?! _Are you looking down on me?!"_

Dylan took that very moment to chime in as well, leaping forward in an aggressive walk toward Darkness. "Yeah, are you!? You think you're _so_ much better than the rest of us huh?"

Darkness wasn't even managing to speak, now. She had stopped moving backwards too, standing a few steps before the doors to the Guild and writhing where she stood like an action movie side-character taking machine-gun fire. There was an odd keening sound coming from her direction.

"What're you gonna do to pay me back, huh?!" Kazuma demanded, and in a flash of insight I sealed the air around me at my maximum radius of effect.

A second passed, and then I could see liquid vibrate and the hall's windows shake with the soundwave that surrounded us. I felt the floor vibrate beneath me a bit but fortunately the sound couldn't reach my ear-drums. The rest of the building's occupants, apart from one table of three and Luna who were within the range of my ability, weren't quite so lucky. They all grabbed their ears without fail, several of the dark-cloaked figures who I guessed were thieves seizing up and falling off their seats or benches, and Dylan and Kazuma fell backwards onto the ground and started rolling around.

The assault lasted a full five seconds before the shaking stopped and I watched Darkness tip backwards onto the ground in front of the Hall with a small puff of raised dust. Then I released the atmosphere around me and was met with a building's worth of groaning and yelling, as well as a rather impressive list of curses and insults being thrown around at full volume by Dylan and Kazuma as they kept rolling around in the dirt.

I sighed, even as the three guys at the table in front of me all offered solemn nods. "Well, at least he's probably not going to do anything like this again." I told myself.

" _Owwwwwww._ " Dylan groaned, rolling around on the ground, blood trailing from his ears. "All I hear is _pain._ "

I looked out at the guild hall. I took in the dozens of warriors, rogues and mages who spent their days risking life and limb in the name of world peace (?), alcohol and somewhere to lay their heads, all of whom were in various stages of pain or catatonia. I saw the woman in armour who had collapsed outside the front door, twitching as Dylan and Kazuma kept rolling around in the dirt. Then I carefully set aside 45,000 Eris from our pile of earnings and pushed it over to Luna, who I couldn't help but feel sorry for.

This was only our second day. God only knew what we'd have done to this place by next week. "For the bag and the trouble." I told her, gently taking the satchel-like artifact from the blonde and pulling the strap over my head and shoulder, leaving the bag to hang against my right hip. Stray Cat perked up, ran down my arm and then poked its head beneath the bag's flap, letting out a soft meow before wriggling fully into the space beyond and letting the flap fall down.

I paused. "You alright in there?" Another soft meow - this time echoing as if it had come from the bottom of a well. "Glad to hear it."

With that, I headed out through the guild's doors, not bothering to try and rouse Aqua; the goddess was staggering around with her eyes closed and her hands raised up like a blind woman, mumbling nonsensically.

Aqua was bad enough normally. I was _not_ dealing with a zombified version of her. Not even with a Stand or magical powers paid for with the souls of my victims.

Fuck that.

I grabbed Dylan as I walked past him, dragging him along by the collar as I headed towards the inn. "Catch up with us later, Kazuma. Look for the Cabbage Patch Inn; the innkeeper'll let us know you're there if you ask him."

There was a groan from behind me. I had no idea if that meant Kazuma heard me or if it was just another pained complaint, and I wasn't going to turn around and check.

There had been enough of today. I just wanted to go back to my unrealistically-comfortable-for-a-world-of-this-time-period bed and _sleep_ until I had enough patience to be dealing with this bullshit. So long as nothing _else_ happened in the next twenty seconds, I could deal with _all_ of this tomo-

"HALT!"

' _I am so done with this shit, my blood pressure is too high and my heart is of lead.'_ I turned around slowly to face the source of the overdramatic, unmistakably young female voice that had rung out into the street.

A girl in a red dress with yellow ornamentation, wearing a brown cloak and a floppy wizard's hat with a face stitched into it, stood posing in the middle of the thoroughfare. The rim of her hat was being held down as she tilted her head forward, her left hand keeping the fabric barrier in place while her left kept her wooden staff straightened. "I heard tell of two new adventurers in town…" She continued, and I tried to decide if she was going for menacing or cool.

She was failing either way.

"One of them is said to possess an unparalleled ability in Explosion Magic…" She continued, before abruptly straightening her back, sending her cape billowing dramatically as she flourished her staff and ran her fingers along the brim of her hat until she was raising it instead of lowering it. One red eye and one black eyepatch were revealed unnecessarily dramatically as she levelled her staff at us. "BUT I SHALL BE THE JUDGE OF THAT!

"I am Megumin, the greatest user of Explosion Magic alive! If you call yourself a user of Explosion Magic, then stand and face me as a worthy rival!"

Finishing with her speech, the Archiwizard Megumin awaited our response. I gave it to her, in the form of a bubble-like sphere which rose from my satchel and into my waiting hand. "NINJA VANISH!"

Then I threw it on the ground and the ensuing dust storm wiped out all visibility within twenty metres, except for the interior of a small atmosphere containing Dylan and I as I high-tailed it back to the inn with my friend bumping along the ground behind me.

Because when life gives you exploding lolis...actually, I had no idea how to finish that saying.

Dylan let out another groan. "Was that Megumin? I could almost hear a speech over the all the ringing."

"Yes."

" _Fuck."_

"Yeah. That about covers it."

We ran in silence for a few moments longer. Then, Dylan spoke up again. "Ninja vanish? Really? You goddamn weeaboo."

"...Shut the fuck up, Dylan."


	3. Chapter 3

_Dylan's POV_

I woke up with a yawn, stretching my limbs out in a manner not unlike a cat. Blinking the crust out of my eyes, I could see Doug poring over the booklet that Luna had given him. "You're already up?" I asked, letting out a yawn.

Doug looked up, revealing eyes that were more red than their usual green-grey. "Up?"

I blinked. "Did…you not sleep?"

Doug paused, considering. Then he moved over to the closed window and twitched one curtain aside.

A few moments later, after he'd finished rolling around on the floor and muffling his own screams as he clutched his eye, he spoke up again in a low groan, "I may have been a bit more entranced by the skill list than I should have been."

I lazily raised my hand, pointing my palm at the booklet in Doug's arms. " **Steal."**

As I clenched my fist, beams of blue light began to shine from the spaces between my fingers. In barely a second, they reached a blinding brightness that burst outwards in an obscuring flash – and once it cleared, the booklet was clutched in my hand.

Ignoring the offended glare I could feel coming from behind Doug's raised hands, I paged through the booklet to the Mage class skills, reading out some of the entries. "Ignite, Drizzle, _Sand?_ The hell kind of skill is Sand?"

"It causes an instant transmutation of earth or stone into sand," Doug immediately recited. "Quite apart from letting you destroy support structures or create a path of difficult terrain for pursuers, it's good for providing a braking surface for high-speed impacts." He grinned, showing far too many teeth. "Also, instant sand to go with Stray Cat's air manipulation? Sandstorms. All the time."

"Leave it to you to turn the most simple skill into something deadly," I said, tossing the booklet back at Doug, not caring in the slightest that it beaned him in the head. I reached over to my bedside table, picking up my own copy of the skill booklet.

Doug grumbled in displeasure as he rubbed his forehead, but quickly grabbed his precious booklet from his chest, rubbing his eyes. "Anything is deadly when it's used the right way," he muttered, "magic is just the ultimate example of that."

"You're right about that, which is why I've been thinking about our powers," I said, Killer Queen's arm appearing, grabbing a small pamphlet on the nightstand and putting it in my own hands. "So Killer Queen turns anything into a bomb right? So if I–" I stopped when I actually looked at what I had picked up. ' _Excellent Axel Activities'_.

"Huh, it's like a crash course on Axel and the area nearby," I marveled, flipping through the small collection of pages. "It shows the entire town, different shopping districts, where to buy certain items, and various religious sects." I chuckled. "It specifically warns you to not interact with the Axis cult in any way."

"My belief in the local leadership's competency just went up a few notches," Doug noted. "Still, I'm definitely learning the Ignite skill if we're going anywhere near _those people."_

I nodded, setting the pamphlet down. "Not gonna blow that up for my example then, it seems pretty useful. You got anything you don't need?"

"Lemme check…" the scotsman muttered, staggering over to the satchel he'd bought the day before and abruptly sticking his entire upper body inside it. There was an inquisitive purr from the bag's echoey depths, some indecipherable muttering, then Doug returned with his Stand draped around his neck and an apple in hand. "Here."

With another flash of light, the apple appeared in my hand. "So I was thinking, if I turn something into a bomb like _this._ " There was a brief flash of purple light as the apple became a bomb. "And I then rip up the original object like _this._ " Killer Queen tore the apple in half. "Will both halves be bombs?"

I formed a detonator with my hand, marveling as the two halves of the apple exploded.

Douglas paled. Dramatically. Around his neck, Stray Cat shuddered, and the scotsman seemed to consider something. "...So if I made a bubble, full of smaller bubbles, that were all touching each other – then you made that into a bomb, and then I burst the outer bubble and let all the small bubbles out...would they _all_ be bombs?"

I cackled. " _Carpet Bombing._ "

Doug just staggered to his bed and collapsed heavily on the mattress. "This is going to freak me the fuck out when I've had some sleep, I just know it…"

"Take a power nap while I use up my skill points, there's a lot I can get right now," I said, looking over some Thief skills. "I'm thinking I'll go the Ninja path, that's got some interesting things."

"I'm thinking I'll go Elementalist myself…" Doug muttered, laying back on the bed as his eyes started closing. "They shall learn...to fear...the bubbles..."

Then he settled into the deep, even breathing rhythm of the sleeping, Stray Cat curled up on his chest and breathing in time with its Master.

I let a small smile grace my face. Now, I _could_ wait a couple of hours for him to wake up and the two of us could go over skills together…

But no, fuck that. I'd be bored out of my mind. I was going _exploring!_

Douglas and Stray Cat shuddered in their sleep.

-x-x-x-

Exiting the inn, I took a deep breath of the early morning air. The day was nice and sunny, and I could feel myself warming up as I headed towards the guild hall. My stomach growled with hunger, thoughts of breakfast filling my mind.

"Oh! Hey, Dylan!"

I turned to the familiar voice, smiling as I saw Kazuma walking towards me. "Hey man, how's it going? Sleep well last night?"

The teen grimaced. "I ended up having to pay for two rooms in the inn," he complained. "That damn Aqua wouldn't shut up until she got her own room, even though it means we had to pay an extra 5,000 Eris on the down-payment!"

"Damn, that fuckin' sucks. Didn't I tell you not to give her any money?" I asked.

"I didn't!" he declared, clutching his head. "I kept it all on me the whole time – I even took it into the bath with me! But first she insulted me, and then she complained, and then she started throwing a fit and going on about how I'd do perverted things to her at night right at the front desk!"

"I get it man, anything to get her to shut up," I sighed. "Is she still lazing about in the room?"

"She got drunk off her ass last night by telling the guy selling booze that I would pay for it later," he said, voice utterly dead, "she's sleeping off the hangover and won't let go of the damn bottle." He kicked out at a rock by the road as we walked past it, missing and cursing under his breath. "Two and a half thousand Eris and she drank the entire thing in one night…"

"Damn..." I muttered, patting him on the back. "Hey, come with me to the guild, I'll spot you for breakfast."

Kazuma immediately bent himself almost in half as he bowed from the waist. " _Thank you!"_

"No prob." I paused. "Hey, are you level two yet? If you are, I can teach you a skill."

"Uh, let me check…" Kazuma muttered, reaching into the pockets of his tracksuit and bringing out his Adventurer's Card. "Um...yeah, it says I'm level two here."

"Sweet, after breakfast I'll teach it to you," I said, seeing the guild hall come into view as we rounded a corner. "That is assuming some bullshit doesn't happen before then."

I hadn't quite finished speaking when the fairly low hustle and bustle of the Axel morning was drowned out by a frustrated male yell. "Dammit, kid, no means no!"

I looked at the commotion, wondering what the hell was going on. Kazuma looked as well.

What we saw was a group of fairly young adults, four to be exact, with a small figure in red clinging onto one of them. The taller members of the group were dressed as adventurers of various kinds, looking like a fairly normal mix of warrior, thief, mage and priest by their clothes; it was the warrior, in armour with a sword at his waist, who was trying to pry the girl in red off of him.

"Please!" the girl begged, "I promise it won't happen again! And besides, it's not like you really needed me there, right?!"

' _Of course…'_

It was Megumin, who looked distressed as all hell. If I remember correctly, she did try to be a part of other parties before joining Kazuma's…

"We spent all day rounding up those monsters so you could hit them all at once!" the man shouted. "Then you just said your 'explosion senses' were tingling and turned and _ran off!_ When we had _fifty monsters_ right in front of us!"

"But...but I had to defend my honour as the greatest user of Explosion Magic in the land!" Megumin defended herself, which just seemed to incense the warrior even more.

"There are Mages in the King's Court who can cast Explosion _five times in a row!"_ he argued, redoubling his attempts to pull the girl off his chestplate. "We took you on because having even one shot was useful for what we were planning yesterday, but you're just way too unreliable!"

He finally managed to pry the girl off of him, quickly retreating as he underarm-tossed her a few feet away from him. "We're going to go and try to catch some of those monsters that got away before they run into any farms, " he declared. Looking at the dejected girl, he sighed, palming his face. "Just...maybe if you can get your head of the clouds at some point, we can try this again. For now, I'm sorry, Megumin, but you'll have to find another party."

And with that, he turned away, the rest of the party walking out of town with him and casting the occasional sad glance back at the small figure in red.

"Shit…that's kinda fucked up," I said, looking at Kazuma.

He himself was grimacing. "Well, if she really ran out in the middle of a raid, it's understandable that they wouldn't want her in the party anymore…" he muttered. "Still, a one-shot, high-damage item can be useful in the right places, so she can't really be _that_ useless, can she?"

A light suddenly came on in his eyes. "Actually...with a proper engagement plan, someone like that could be really useful…" He started grinning. "And plus, if I accept her as a party member, she'll definitely feel indebted to me!"

"Okay buddy, cutting you off _right_ there," I said, lightly punching him in the arm. "I thought the three of us were making a party? Or are you running off on your own already?" I asked in a joking tone.

Rubbing his arm, Kazuma turned to look at me. "Oh, no, of course not!" he declared, shaking his head, "but, I mean…" His eyes flickered for a moment, before his grin suddenly resurfaced for a moment. "Well, you and that Doug guy seem like you're more interested in going out and doing your thing, right?"

"Yeah, kinda? Where are you going with that?"

"Well, you guys might have gotten really awesome powers," and _wow_ did Kazuma sound like he was trying not to grumble when he said that, "but fantasy worlds like this one always have stupidly overpowered enemies running around, don't they? It's designed to be impossible for just one person to do some things so people have to form guilds and pay extra for decorations and guild halls. So, it'd be best if we had more party members, right?"

"Yeah, I kinda see where you're going with this… So you want to make a big party of people? I can dig it," I said, glancing at Megumin. "And you want her to join?"

"Well, we're not gonna find a lot of party members just falling into our laps, right?" Kazuma asked rhetorically. "This is an open-world fantasy RPG, not Final Fantasy. So why waste the opportunity?" He clapped his hand on my shoulder. "Plus, according to that guy she uses Explosion Magic, right? Since you use Kille–" He abruptly paused, quickly shutting his mouth.

Guessing the reason for his reticence, I told him, "Just call it Detonation Magic. It's what it's called on my Adventurer's Card."

 _Across the square, Megumin's head abruptly jerked upwards._

"Right," he said, breathing out a sigh of relief. "You're probably the best user of Detonation Magic that exists, right?"

 _Megumin, face hidden by her hat (the sewn smile on which was looking oddly sinister), turned jerkily towards the speaking duo. Her body was mostly being dragged along by her neck as it forced the rest of her to follow behind it._

 _When she was facing the two teens, she started rising to her feet like a marionette being lifted in readiness for a performance._

"So there should be really good synergy with that girl," Kazuma finished. "Who knows? Maybe there's some kind of combination-attack feature and you can make some massive, clear-the-battlefield one-shot explosion attack."

 _No one impeded the small girl with the silly hat as she made her jerky way across the open space. No one dared._

"That would be awesome, but I don't know if they would synergize that well…" I replied. "Maybe if we exploded something in tandem? Detonation Magic works better with Doug's power because I can actually turn the air into a bomb with him."

"Well, we won't know unless you try!" Kazuma insisted, "So let's at least ask her–"

Kazuma had been beginning to turn as he spoke, so he could walk off towards Megumin. He had still been speaking to me, though, so he didn't have his eyes facing forward until his body was already aligned with where Megumin had been sitting. When he was looking properly forward, though, he had already taken a step–

And bumped into something. "Eh?"

He looked down. "Oh, sorry, I didn't...see you...there…"

The teen's voice trailed off, and he swallowed loudly. "W-what the hell…?"

He backed quickly away, letting me see past where he had been standing. Megumin was revealed, standing with her face cast entirely in shadow, her hat leering at me as her staff was held rock-steady in her hand. "So, you're the one?"

Was it bad that I expected this to happen?

All I could see of Megumin was her hat, since I fairly towered over her like I did quite a few people in Axel. "Um, I guess?" I could _feel_ the dramatic speech coming.

"Once before, I felt a disturbance like this…" she declared. "As the greatest user of Explosion Magic alive, I, Megumin, went in search of its source – but through trickery and cowardice, my quarry evaded me." Her free hand rose to the lapel of her cloak. "Until now."

There was a _whoosh_ of displaced air as Megumin spun her cloak around her body, not taking it off but giving the impression that it was a lot bigger than it actually was. "I am Megumin, an Archwizard who has mastered the Path of Explosion!" she declared. "If you call yourself a master of Explosion Magic, then face me and prove your dedication to the greatest magic – or turn and flee, so I can banish you to the darkness of the great beyond!"

My expression was perfectly deadpan as I reached out and pulled her hat off her head. Megumin's dramatic pose immediately collapsed, her staff dropping to the ground as she jumped up and grabbed for that hat's brim with both hands. "Hey! Don't you know a wizard's hat is their pride?! What are you trying to do, disrespecting the Archwizard Megumin?!"

"What are you trying to do, picking a fight with me in the middle of the street?" I asked, keeping the hat out of her reach.

"A user of Explosion Magic should always stand ready to defend their pride!" Megumin declared, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that she was still trying to jump high enough to grab her hat. "Being challenged by an Archwizard is a privilege anyone should be honoured to receive!"

"So you want to test our Magic in the middle of the town?" I asked, raising a brow.

Megumin paused...for about a second. "Explosion Magic is only at its best when it has a good target!" She then changed tactics, attempting to use me as a climbing frame instead of jumping for her hat.

"Well you're right about that, but I use Detonation Magic. I channel destructive energy through objects, rather than just raining down oblivion from the sky." I didn't even react that much to Megumin climbing up me, only raising her hat further from her grasp.

Megumin, who was at this point standing on my shoulders and leaning over my head to try and reach her hat, paused. "You use Detonation Magic?"

I handed her back her hat. "Yep."

Megumin's face abruptly filled my field of view as she leaned over the top of my head to glare at me upside-down. "Hmm. Detonation Magic is only a step on the path to true Explosion Magic… _but_ , I suppose that as your senior on the Path of Explosion I have a responsibility." She disappeared from my sight, but I could feel it as she settled down on my shoulders and jammed her hat back on her head. "Very well then! Until you become worthy to be called a true user of Explosion Magic, I, Megumin, shall guide you on the path as your Master!"

I turned to Kazuma. "Hey cool, I just became an apprentice."

Kazuma looked at me, his eyes full of regret, and sighed as he turned towards the guild hall. As he walked, I could just about hear him muttering to himself, "I wonder of this is what the Hokage felt like? Dammit, even if it'll make me rich, being a member of this party is going to drive me crazy."

I grinned, securing Megumin on my shoulders. "Well then _Master,_ what is the first step on the Path of Explosion?"

I heard her draw breath to reply – then, my hearing was completely overwhelmed by a deep, guttural growl from just behind me.

I could almost feel how red her face was, and I let out a laugh. "Well, I don't know about you, but I think breakfast sounds like a good first step."

And with that, I followed Kazuma as we walked towards the guild hall.

-x-x-x-

"So basically, I can use Detonation magic as much as I want without any downsides or mana usage," I said, marveling at how quickly the small girl devoured the food in front of her. "That's why I specialize in it rather then full on Explosion Magic."

I didn't immediately get a response, as both Kazuma and Megumin had stuffed their faces full of food. It only took a few moments for Megumin to swallow what she'd been chewing on, pressing her hands down on the table and standing up to lean over it at me. "...To think, the Gods would bestow such a cruel fate; to be so close to Explosion Magic, yet unable to take the final step…"

She looked up, giving me a pitying expression. "Don't worry; I'm sure you'll still be liked despite your failings."

I don't think I've ever been able to pull off a proper anime style deadpan expression before. I have now, though. "Yeah…I guess my charming personality will have to do, rather than Explosion Magic."

Kazuma choked on his food during the laughing fit that followed, leaving me to try and dislodge whatever was stuck in his throat until he could breathe again. "At least...the damage will be the same...either way…" he gasped, taking a swig from his flagon.

I swallowed the insult on the tip of my tongue as I considered his words. "You're probably right about that," I admitted, grabbing a fried toad leg and taking a bite. ' _Hm not bad.'_

Megumin turned a frowning expression on Kazuma, slamming a hand down on the table for emphasis. "What was that? Did I just hear a level two adventurer slandering the glory of Explosion Magic, the greatest magic in the entire world?"

Kazuma, who seemed to have recovered from his choking, looked up sharply. He paused for a moment, then made a point of shading his eyes and cupping an ear as he turned to look in different directions. "Huh? Hey, Dylan, did you hear something? I thought I heard some kind of squeak like a tiny mouse, but I'm not sure."

"Hush, level two. Don't slander the glorious art that is explosions," I responded. The look of betrayal that spread across his face was priceless, and Megumin crossed her arms with a firm nod as she leaned back.

"It seems my apprentice truly has explosions in his heart."

Kazuma turned a deadpan look on her. "And you've got explosions in your brain."

I shrugged; he had a pretty good point. I still patted Megumin on the head though, stopping whatever scathing rant was about to come out of her mouth. "So you ready to learn that skill now?"

Kazuma's deadpan broke almost immediately, his eyes lighting up with a familiar child-like glee. "Definitely!"

I got up from my seat, or well, I _tried_ to. Megumin had grabbed my arm and was looking up at me expectantly. I was confused for a second before I realized what she wanted me to do. So I leaned down, my back facing her as she climbed back onto my shoulders.

"Alright, follow me then."

-x-x-x-

The three of us stopped outside the guildhall, and I motioned for Kazuma to stay where he was. I walked a couple meters away from him, readjusting Megumin on my shoulders as I turned to face him.

"Ok, so the skill I'm gonna teach is called 'Steal'." I said, smiling as Kazuma's face lit up even more brightly than before. "It basically works like this: you can use it to steal an object from the target. Its success and what exactly you steal is based on your own luck stat. The higher it is, the more valuable the item you will get. At higher levels, you can sort of _direct_ what you want to steal, but that's a little beyond you at this point.

"Allow me to demonstrate. **Steal!** "

Blue light collapsed into my hand, and when it faded, I was holding Kazuma's money pouch.

I could almost _see_ the train of thought that ran through his mind. I had stolen his money, money he had earned – but he had earned it by running around screaming and we had given it to him. He was stuck somewhere between outrage and frustration, leading to a rather amusing expression.

"Now that I've shown it to you, it should be on your skill card. Get it, and try to steal the pouch back from me," I urged him.

He pulled out his adventurer card, quickly selecting the new skill that was there and pointing his hand at me. " **Steal!"**

In a bright flash of blue light, Kazuma had a hold of _my_ own money pouch.

We locked eyes for a solid three seconds. "Kazuma no."

"Kazuma _yes_."

Another flash of blue light, and my pouch was back where it was supposed to be. I took a glance up at Megumin, who seemed mildly interested at what was happening. With a quick flash of purple light, Killer Queen tossed Kazuma his money back.

"Cool, now you've got a skill. As you level up you'll be able to choose a class if you want. Or you could just keep picking up skills from others."

Kazuma chewed his lip even as he put his money away. "Hmm...so I can go for a generalised variable-role build and probably miss out on the high-end skills, or I can specialise to fulfil a role – but would they even be the same here?" His eyes drifted to where I had secured my own money. "...Maybe being a thief wouldn't be so bad...and maybe I could learn some skills from other classes first and keep them after I change jobs…?"

He kept muttering to himself.

I grinned at Kazuma. "Hey man, you pick whatever you want, but I don't know if the system works like that."

The Archwizard on my shoulders chose that time to chime in. "Wow, you guys are _really_ new, aren't you?" Apparently the question was rhetorical, since Megumin didn't wait for a response before standing up on my shoulders so that her shadow fell over Kazuma like something out of Batman. "Very well then! I, Megumin, will educate you!"

In a flash of purple, Killer Queen's legs formed on my own, keeping me steady as the Archwizard struck another pose.

Kazuma took a very deliberate, very pointed step sideways out of Megumin's shadow. "Will you really?" he asked, not sounding very convinced. "How high of a level can you even be? You're just a kid!"

A low, evil-sounding laugh emanated from above my head. Or, Megumin's attempt at a low, evil-sounding laugh, which sounded more like Yzma when she got turned into a kitten than anything actually threatening. "The depths of your ignorance are showing, shifty-eyes!" she declared, drawing an offended squawk from Kazuma. "Petty adventurer, you stand before the Archwizard Megumin, master of explosions, a level eighty adventurer!"

Kazuma stood and stared as Megumin cackled, seeming to wilt in place as he sank to his knees and started drawing circles in the dirt. "...I'm grossly outclassed by a flat-chested chuunibyo who can't get a job even in a world without child labour laws," he mumbled to himself, "is this the ultimate fate of all working-class men? Is this divine punishment for playing all those eroge? Kami-sama, I swear I'll be good, just please let me break down this world that stamps on my hopes and dreams."

I could feel a single sweatdrop rolling down the side of my head. ' _From the_ real world _or not, Kazuma is still an anime character.'_

Megumin's evil laughter continued for a few moments before she started coughing, apparently having strained her throat. When she had her lungs back under control again, she sat back down. "Anyway, like I was saying before – the Skills you get from your Adventurer's Card are granted _by_ the card _for_ your Job. Adventurers are the exception, but normally the Skills you can learn are limited by your Job, Class and the Skills you've already learned."

She kicked out a bit, poking the pouch where I kept my share of Doug and I's finances with her foot. "That Steal skill you used, for example; if you chose to change Jobs to a Thief now, then you'd still be able to use it, because that Skill belongs to the Thief Job. But if you became a Mage, or a Warrior, then you wouldn't be able to use it anymore because your Card would change to support your new Job."

"But what would _happen_ to the Skill? Would he get refunded for the points he spent on it?" I asked, shifting the pouch a bit to make sure it was still secured to my belt.

"Nope!" she declared, "It would have been a complete waste of his pitiful efforts as an untalented level two adventurer trying to look good by attaching himself to other people."

I heard a _thump_ , and when I looked over Kazuma had flopped face-first into the dirt with his ass in the air. "...Kami-sama, when I die this time, please, just let it end…"

"Are you sure you want to ask Aqua for that?" I wondered, and he instantly shot upright, looking around in panic.

When there were no blunettes in evidence, he settled down a bit, shooting a _look_ my way. "Oi, don't even joke about that. Do you have any idea what that useless excuse for a goddd…" he trailed off as his flickered to Megumin, then caught himself, "–damned pain in my ass would do to me if she got to judge my soul?!" Kazuma apparently did, or at least had some thoughts, since he went whiter than milk and shook in place.

"You'd be fine," Megumin dismissed him, "it's not like anyone important would even notice you'd died, after all. You'd probably have to get to the afterlife yourself because no angel or demon could be bothered to fetch such a miserable soul." She paused, thinking. "Although...undoubtedly, as a master of Explosion I would get to meet someone interesting when I died…I wonder what it would be like to blow up a god…"

"Hey hey, just because he isn't walking the Path of Explosion doesn't mean he's completely irrelevant."

She leaned over the top of my head to look at me like I'd just suggested the sky was made of chocolate. "Yes it does."

Even if she had a point, I was curious about Skills. "So how do the Skills _work_ again?"

The slight downward push on my shoulders suggested Megumin had just shrugged. "As one who walks the Path of Explosion amidst glorious hellfire and divine judgement I've never spent much time thinking about it," she said simply, "but I know that unless you know the Skill really well, then after you change Jobs you can't use it anymore."

"So you'd just have to _really_ learn how to use the skill if you wanted to keep using it after you changed jobs?" Kazuma asked, looking contemplative.

Megumin blinked at him. "Oh, you're still here?" While Kazuma was still reeling, she nodded. "That was a decent attempt at seeming like even a normal human being, but if you only repeat stuff you were just told then you'll never convince anyone that you're more than a waste of materials that could be turned into a glorious Explosion."

"Would you two stop? Please?" I asked, readjusting Megumin on my shoulders. "All these insults are starting to get on my nerves."

Megumin took a breath in preparation to say something else – "I'll buy you a snack if you stop insulting him." – then closed her mouth, settling on my shoulders and swinging her heels gently with no more sound than an erratic humming.

"Make it so."

-x-x-x-

A couple minutes later, and a few more Eris spent, Megumin was comfortably sitting on my shoulders, munching on an apple. Kazuma had decided to get one as well.

"So anywhere you want to go now?" he asked, taking another bite of the apple. "Or do you want to go find Doug?"

"Nah, he's not gonna be up for a while," I said, readjusting Megumin slightly. "He pulled an all nighter looking at skills so he took a nap. Should be a couple hours or so till he gets up."

Kazuma finished his apple and thought for a moment. "What if we—"

He didn't get to finish, as an apple core beaned off his forehead and the human firecracker on my shoulders spoke up. "Silence, one-who-does-not-walk-the-path," she said, leaning over my head to look me in the eye. "I propose that I start your training on Explosion Magic immediately. All we need to do is find an acceptable—"

"Vetoed," I declared, shushing Kazuma before he could shout an insult. "I wanted to go get some gear and do a quick mission before meeting back up with Doug."

Megumin looked like she wanted to say something, but held off and nestled her way back onto my shoulders. "Very well."

' _She's probably so compliant because I just fed her.'_ I thought as I started walking off, motioning for Kazuma to follow.

"Do you even know where you're going?" the other teen asked grumpily.

"Oh yeah." I nodded, laying eyes on a recognisable spread of patterned decorations at the end of a T-junction. "Let's just say this place is…" I grinned. " _Familiar_."

-x-x-x-

The door to Wiz's shop opened with the soft chime of a bell as the three of us entered. The Lich looked up from the counter, and seemed surprised that people were coming into her shop. The surprise was quickly replaced with a soft smile as she greeted us. "Ah, welcome!"

I smiled back at her, giving her a quick wave. "Yo."

Megumin marvelled at the fact that she could see into the top shelves.

Kazuma marvelled at the most well-endowed women he had ever seen, and shot me a quick thumbs up.

"Welcome to my humble shop," the Lich greeted us, inclining her head. "My name is Wiz; can I help you?"

"Nice to meet you Wiz," I said, stepping to the side so Megumin couldn't grab something on the shelf. "And as a matter of fact you _can_ help me. I was looking to purchase some armor if you had any."

Wiz blinked. "Um…I'm not really a blacksmith…"

"Oh that's fine," I assured her, "I'm looking for something a bit more... _exotic."_

Kazuma muttered something about Wiz being exotic. He was given all the attention he deserved.

"Well, I suppose I _might_ have something…" Wiz mused, walking out from behind the counter. "Ah, please excuse me for a moment, I just have to check the back…" She paused before she left, offering a hopeful smile. "Please feel free to browse! You never know when you might find something useful!"

I smiled back, offering a wave to her as she left. I was hardly able to turn around before Kazuma grabbed me by the collar, though he had to reach up a good bit to do it.

"...How," he started. "How did you know that this...this—"

"Unearthly beauty?" I offered.

"—this _unearthly beauty_ was running this store?" he asked, his eyes seeming to get watery. "Do you have some sort of secret skill that you didn't tell me about?! Is that your actual blessing?!"

"No," I said with a grin. "I just have a knack for it. Probably due to me being American."

He hissed back at me. " _Is that a fucking racial bonus?!"_

"Naw," I replied, allowing my southern accent to come up. "Ah'm just good with those women folk."

Before Kazuma could reply, Megumin spoke up from my shoulders. "What's an American?"

Kazuma looked panicked, but I already had a response prepared. "Imagine a subclass of a race, that's pretty much it."

She seemed to accept that as an answer, though she might just not have cared since I tossed her another apple from my sleeve.

So far, food bribery was looking like my most successful strategy.

"Dylan, _teach me how to—_ "

The door to the back room opened with a soft click, cutting Kazuma off. "I found something!" Wiz cheerfully declared, her cupped hands held out in front of her. "I'm sorry it took so long but I didn't think I'd ever sell it and I didn't really keep track of where it was…"

"It's not a problem at all," Kazuma declared grandly, having somehow moved from grabbing my collar to standing straight and smiling in the past half a second.

"What is it?" I asked. "It doesn't look like a suit of armor…"

Wiz opened her hands, revealing what looked like a necklace nestled on her palms. "Well, I don't have any actual armour, since it's a bit expensive for me…" she admitted, "but I bought this from an Adventurer who said it kept his teammate safe until she retired."

The actual necklace itself was a finely-woven steel chain, or that was it looked like, with a disk pendant threaded on to it. The pendant itself was an oddly shiny silver, which looked like it was reflecting sunlight even inside the shop. I could just about make out a carving on its face of what looked like a heart.

"So do you know what it does? Or is it more of a metaphorical protection then a physical one?" I asked, gently taking the pendent from her hands. I briefly marveled at how soft they were.

"I'm afraid not," Wiz replied, seeming to shrink a bit with the admission. "He seemed like he was eager for it to do someone else some good, but he also left quite quickly after selling it…"

' _That raises a couple red flags, but then again anything Wiz sells has a downside, yet is still useful in its own right.'_ I thought, putting it on.

An astounding amount of nothing happened.

"...You wouldn't happen to know how to activate it, would you Wiz?" I asked, tapping the pendent, hoping for something to happen.

It didn't, to my disappointment.

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure…" Wiz apologised again, bowing her head then stepping forward. "Though actually, maybe…"

She lifted the pendant from where it was sitting around my neck, inspecting it for a moment before turning it over and going a bit red. "Ah...it was on the back…"

I took the pendent and lifted it to my own eyes, a wave of dread washing over me as I read it. "With a burning heart of molten iron, I'll stand and face down fear. Free-Bending Armour, activate?"

My first thought was, ' _That sounds like a phrase from a_ Power Rangers _film.'_ My second was ' _Holy shit what the fuck is happening!?'_

The second the phrase had exited my mouth, I saw the necklace start to shine with a brilliant white light before the glow started to spread across my body. Megumin fell off my shoulders with a yelp as the luminescence spread further, then started bending my limbs into odd places.

My arms shot out sideways, extending to their full length along the line of my shoulders as the glowing spread there. Then they jerked forward, still held straight, once it reached my elbows before bending at those elbows and pulling back, leaving them near my hips with my fists clenched once the light had spread to my fingers.

By the time that finished the light had reached my legs, and as it passed my hips it slowed on the left side. On the right hand side it continued down, jerking my leg up at the hip and then bending it inward at the knee once it got that far, leaving me standing on one foot with the other in the air like I was miming kung-fu. When the light reached my right foot, it crashed hard to the floor and sent me spinning around, my left leg rising and quickly being engulfed by the light in the spun before also crashing down once I was facing the same direction.

When my feet were done, my arms moved again, my right arm extending forward as my left hand came up to press in at its elbow before pulling back like it was ready to throw a punch and leaving my left arm in place like a guard.

Then, finally, my right leg dragged backwards until its foot was at ninety degrees to my left and a decent length behind it.

Each time the glowing finished covering a limb, the light would burst off in a shower of sparks and leave behind something thin and clinging. Or, so I could see when my limbs were in sight. My head was kept straight through almost the whole thing, and as my foot came to rest, the light spread up across my face and head.

I nearly let out a scream as my sight disappeared in white, but almost before I could have opened my mouth it faded.

Pulling myself out of the strange stance I'd been moved into, I looked down. My entire body was covered in a near-skintight, yet somehow loose-feeling suit. At first glance, it reminded me of the suit that Black Panther wore, but there were some differences.

It seemed to have armor plates woven into the fabric, covering most of my torso, arms, and legs. My face was covered in a ninja-like mask, only showing my eyes, according to the mirror in front of me. It honestly looked pretty cool.

There were only two real problems with it.

"...Well, I suppose the man _did_ say the last owner was a woman…" Wiz said aloud, apparently trying to find a bright side.

I could barely hear her over Kazuma laughing as he collapsed to the floor and rolled around.

I couldn't blame him. Seeing a man dressed in a bright-pink armored suit probably _was_ that funny. The fact that the armoured chestplate was a literal _breast_ -plate probably only made it worse.

"Yeah yeah, laugh it up," I said, getting up. "Getting moved like that fucking _hurt._ "

Kazuma was still laughing, and Megumin had turned away and was shaking, but Wiz at least was listening. "Um, could you say that again? The mask is muffling your voice."

Before I could reach up and the mask off, I felt it sort of _fold_ itself off my head and face, retreating back around my neck. "Huh, all I did was think about it moving off my face...well, I guess it _is_ magic." I grimaced. "Though that still doesn't explain why I have to move like that…"

"Apprentice," Megumin spoke up, her voice still a bit thin from what was definitely laughing, "you still have much to learn."

When I turned to look at her, the Archwizard had struck a pose of her own. "Mastering any art is an investment of the heart and soul!" she declared. "You must put your all behind every motion and dedicate your existence to the utmost pinnacle of ability!"

She pointed her staff at me. "The maker of that armour...they were a master of their craft! They recognised that a spectacle must be made of a battle for it to be truly meaningful!" She nodded firmly. "This armour is an example of what we who walk the Path of Explosion should work for. I approve of it!"

I didn't trust the look on her face as she said it. She really just thought it was hilarious, didn't she?

"For once I agree with the explosion-loli!" Kazuma gasped, "You have to wear it! Definitely!"

I caught Megumin's hand before it could smack Kazuma, and spent a few moments thinking.

On the one hand, I was wearing an almost skin-tight pink armored suit with breasts molded onto the torso that had appeared after a transformation sequence.

On the other hand, I was wearing an unobtrusive armored suit that I could change into in seconds and didn't have to carry.

...Well, I already had a pink Stand. And I could probably hire someone to beat the chestplate into a more fitting shape. "Wiz, how much for the suit?"

"Ah, let me see…" Wiz replied, going behind the counter and pulling out a large book that she quickly flicked through. "Ah, that'll be...fifty-thousand Eris."

I nodded, reaching for my money pouch – then paused. "Yeah, uh, little problem with that," I noted. "I think I gotta take the suit off to get to my money. Any idea on how to do that?"

Wiz quickly walked back around the counter and checked the pendent again. "I'd hoped it would change!" she said happily, peering at the metal where it had sunk into the armour near the base of my throat and between the moulded breasts.

"What's it say? I can't really look down and read it…"

Wiz peered at the necklace. "With my burning heart at ease, I'll wait for fear to wake me. Free-Bending Armor, deactivate."

I let out a sigh. "It just _has_ to be just as dramatic."

I just barely felt something tap my leg, and when I looked down I found Megumin looking up at me with an expectant face as she shook out her hand. "Apprentice! If you want to truly walk the Path of Explosion, you must put your heart and soul into the deactivation!" She struck a pose of her own, her eyes glowing red. "Now go forth! Put your maximum effort into it!"

I instantly struck a pose, taking on the most confident and strong tone I could. "Of course master! I shall give it my all!"

She gave me a satisfied nod, striking another power. "Excellently said Dylan! As I have come to expect of my apprentice, you are flourishing with explosive glory!"

I struck the same pose that the suit had forced me into, grinning wildly. "Thank you master! I will use this to truly start my journey on the Path of Explosion! I should have expected that my master would set the explosive fire of will ablaze within me!"

"As expected of you Dylan! You are starting to understand!"

"Thank you, Master Megumin!"

"No, thank you Apprentice Dylan!"

"Megumin!"

"Dylan!"

Wiz was smiling a bit uncertainly, looking back and forth between us. "It's...good to see you like it…?" she tried, and in the corner Kazuma's forehead thumped repeatedly against the wall as he muttered into the wood.

"This is insane. I'm expected to fight the Demon King when half my party are batshit crazy? I thought I was supposed to have a high Luck stat? Then why am I stuck babysitting two chuunibyou with an explosion fetish?"

"Now, recede back to whence you came!" I yelled, putting myself back in the original pose as best as I could manage. " _With my burning heart at ease, I'll wait for fear to wake me! Free-Bending Armor, deactivate!_ "

With another flash of light the armor disappeared back into the amulet, thankfully without a big lightshow or movement sequence. I nodded happily, and I was about to reach down and get Wiz the money when several things happened at once.

First, I realised that I felt much colder than I had before — almost like a breeze was passing through the shop where it hadn't before.

Second, I saw that everyone in the room was looking at me with astonished faces.

Third, the Eris coins and bills that I had been carrying in my money pouch scattered all over the floor around me, and it clicked that the armor had ripped apart my clothing when it had appeared on me, leaving me completely naked.

Kazuma's head made one more impressive _thump._ "Curse you, Kami-sama. Curse you to hell."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Doug's POV_

Sometimes, I'll go for extended periods of time without sleeping and feel no different at all. It's a bad habit, though occasionally a useful one. The only real issue with it is that as soon as I go to sleep, all the side-effects that went unnoticed come back with a vengeance once I wake up.

As such, when I woke up from my 'power nap', I immediately had to suppress some low screeching as my eyes _burned._ I scrabbled for my pocket, feeling my Adventurer's Card and drawing it out before I squinted at it in quick bursts. I identified the part I needed, reached out with my finger and managed to swipe across the text-box on my fifth attempt.

There was a glow like embers across the card, and I felt warmth flow into my mind as knowledge plunked itself down in my memory. Rolling sideways off the bed, leaving Stray Cat blinking blearily on the sheets, I managed to form a wonky 'bowl' of solid air in front of me before I raised my hand over it and focussed on the packet of knowledge that I had traded a skill point for. " **Drizzle."**

It was _like_ using the power of my Stand, but it was also...different. Each was an exercise in willpower, but where Stray Cat's abilities felt like they flowed _from_ me, the magic skill felt like it flowed _through_ me. A subtle variation, but still one that I noticed.

Kind of, at least. Most of me was focussed on cutting off the spell once it had filled the bowl and then dunking my face in it.

There was enough depth to the bowl that I could fit most of my head in up to just before the ears. With a sealed atmosphere over my nose keeping the water out of it, I was able to just relax and enjoy the cool water on my burning eyes.

I resurfaced once I realised that I'd spent several minutes in the bowl without renewing the atmosphere around my nose, drying my face on the blanket just beside me as I blinked my vision clear. "Huh," I muttered, "so the atmosphere remained breathable, even though I should have run out of oxygen in about one breath and been inhaling carbon dioxide after that…"

I paused, wondering, then reached out to my Adventurer's Card again and swiped across another skill. That was me down to fifteen skill points, now, but I had to test something. For _science!_

I formed three solid air bubbles in front of myself. Each of these was, for all intents and purposes, a completely sealed environment – an atmosphere unto itself. I wasn't entirely sure _what_ I was doing to the air itself to create the effect of a solid mass despite it remaining in gaseous form, but as I'd observed before they were completely air-and-water-tight, with a surface strength that could contain enough air pressure to cause death via hydrostatic shock when released.

I'd thought moving air around and causing the solidity effect was all I could do – but, maybe…

I raised my hand in front of the first bubble, calling on the second knowledge packet that I'd received that morning. " **Ignite."**

True to the skill's name, the bubble caught fire. It didn't last very long, though, and it wasn't particularly impressive. Less heat and light than I would have expected from a lighter.

That was about what I had expected.

The second bubble, when I looked at it, was exactly the same as the first. Reaching out to it with my hands, I felt the way it gave a bit under my hands as I held it. Less rigid than a basketball, more than a balloon. Closing my eyes, I kept pressure on it as I focussed on trying to change the properties of the shell. A few seconds passed, but I felt the bubble begin to press _outwards,_ growing larger and more rigid beneath my palms and forcing my hands apart.

Grinning to myself, I stopped pushing the bubble to grow and instead focussed on something else. I knew I could pull air inwards to form a Kazedan, and that I could push air outwards to create a vacuum. So, depending on what 'air' meant, I _should_ be able to…

It took almost a minute of concentration this time, holding the image of a single sphere orbited by a smaller sphere in my mind's eye and trying to both push and pull at once. I eventually felt _something_ change though, a slight breeze blowing around my fingers where they still held the bubble, and I held the image for another minute before stopping and opening my eyes.

From the outside, the bubble didn't seem to have changed at all. That wasn't a big surprise though; if I'd done it right, it wouldn't have seemed to change.

The real test was when I let the bubble go at head height, took a few steps back, and pointed my finger at it. " **Ignite."**

This time, the bubble didn't just catch fire – it _burst_ into flames, exploding outwards like a flower with a _bang._ It was over in a second, but Stray Cat had launched itself right off the bed and down underneath its frame almost before the sound was over. Checking on my Stand, I saw its glinting eyes back where the frame sat against the wall, its tail swishing back and forth while a low growl reached my ears. "Sorry, little guy. Didn't mean to scare you."

Stray Cat kept glaring at me for a few moments, then slowly padded out from under the bed to my waiting hand, where a few moments of stroking and scratching coaxed the growl into a purr. Smiling to myself, I lifted the Stand onto my shoulder where my right hand kept scratching its 'chin', while my left hand rose to sit underneath the third bubble as I closed my eyes to focus once more.

The image in my mind was a lot more complex, this time. Two groups of sixteen spheres, each orbited by two shells of two and six smaller spheres, the two identical groupings connected to another grouping of twelve grouped spheres orbited by two shells of two and four smaller spheres. It was a bit of a struggle to keep it in my thoughts – or I'd expected it to be, anyway. Honestly, it seemed...a lot easier than I had anticipated.

One way or another, I quickly felt the breeze around my fingers once more, and after counting off sixty seconds of focus with the finger stroking Stray Cat's petals as a metronome, I opened my eyes and stepped back once more to raise my hand.

Stray Cat hunkered down a bit, moving most of its body behind my neck and just poking its head out around the side of my head to watch as its tail flicked over my other shoulder. I patted it reassuringly even as I reached for my newest memory. " **Ignite."**

Flames sprang up around the bubble – but only for a moment. A bare instant after the spell caught, it died, leaving the bubble behind completely untouched.

I stared at it for a long moment. Then, I started to grin massively. "This...has _potential."_

-x-x-x-

Another half hour of testing revealed that I could fill a balloon with water or methane by holding the molecule in my mind's eye,. However, I could also _create_ water by pulling hydrogen and oxygen separately from the air and then compressing the bubble tightly enough, though I couldn't seem to manage that with methane by pulling on carbon and hydrogen. I didn't find any success with straining pure carbon from the atmosphere either, though I wasn't sure if it was a lack of success I was witnessing or if I just couldn't see the particles that were being pulled into the bubble.

What I'd done with the bowl was apparently pulling oxygen in from the water in the 'bowl' while pushing carbon dioxide out. The nitrogen that had been captured in the initial shell was probably remaining at a high enough percentage of the total air volume that it stayed balanced enough for me to breathe, though I couldn't be sure since I hadn't quite figured out how, if it was possible, to 'feel' the air content of the atmospheres I created.

I could tell what area was under my control, could feel the actual movements of the air and how to change them, but its content was a mystery to that sense. I couldn't test my ability to strain other airborne compounds into shells because I wasn't sure how to test for them, unlike CO2 and CH4, with their fire-retardant and odorous properties, respectively.

If I could pull fluoride from the air I'd like to know, though. I remembered that it was a major component in toothpaste – though I admittedly wasn't sure what else went into it, or how to properly mix them even if I did. Dammit, now I was really regretting dropping Chemistry back in my penultimate year of highschool.

I'd probably have to turn to magic for 'advanced' hygiene, honestly. I was no kind of biologist and barely any kind of chemist – I was better at physics, but no genius.

Thank God I didn't have to pay science more than lip service any more.

I examined the two bubbles I had floating before me. One was oxygen, the other was hydrogen. I'd made the latter as close to twice as large as the former that I could manage, and I was just pressing the two into one another to merge them into a single bubble when someone banged on the door.

Blinking, I left the new single, rather large bubble hanging in the air over the bed, where Stray Cat was lazing on the pillow, as I walked to the door and pulled it open. "Yes? What can I help you wi–" I stopped talking. "Oh, it's _you."_

"What the hell's with changing your greeting like that?!" Aqua demanded, dressed in light blue pyjamas with her hair down and a massive bottle of alcohol clutched in one of her hands. "You should be honoured to find a goddess on your doorstep!"

I gave her a deadpan look, making a point of sticking my out the door and looking both ways down the corridor. "Eh? A goddess? I don't see a goddess around here. I see a drunk free-loading murderer standing outside my room, but I certainly don't see a goddess."

Aqua turned red. "Dammit, show some respect!" She stamped her foot. "I didn't kill you; that was the stupid homo-NEET!" She paused. "And I'm not drunk!"

"So you're just this much of a dishevelled idiot normally then?" I asked idly, studying the colours Aqua was turning with a vaguely interested eye. She _did_ have a certain beauty to her, it was true, but I'd never really gone in for the physical part of attraction. It got in the way of more important things. "Good to know."

Aqua waved her bottle of alcohol in my direction, which honestly did constitute a kind of threat. Seriously, the weight of the glass alone—not accounting for whatever liquid it still contained—would make it a decent weapon. Hmm...actually, since ethanol was made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, would I be able to make it in my bubbles? Being able to pull alcohol from thin air could be lucrative and useful, for first aid and fuel and bartering or getting someone drunk under the table…

I was jerked from my thoughts when Aqua grabbed me by the collar and dragged me down to her eye-level. I had about two heads worth of height on her, so it was kind of necessary. "Dammit, _stop ignoring me!"_ She shouted in my face. "Stupid shut-ins, spending so much time fantasizing over 2D women they don't appreciate a goddess appearing before them…"

' _Oh, the irony.'_ I thought to myself, even as I tried to dislodge Aqua's grip while she was grumbling. I had about as much luck as I would have done trying to pry open an industrial press. ' _Christ, her stats are really kind of ridiculous.'_

Apparently remembering what she was doing, Aqua re-focussed on me. "Anyway – stop it with the damn noises already, would you?! A goddess deserves her rest after dealing with useless followers all day and your unholy racket is keeping me awake!"

I glanced at the curtains behind me, which were letting in a steady stream of mid-day sunlight. "If you want to get enough rest then don't get so drunk that the hangover lasts all of the next day, you washed-up has-been," I replied, taking 'hold' of the air around her hands and inflating some shells in the gaps between her grip and my collar. The expanding air took a few moments but managed to force her into releasing me, and I left the bubbles hovering in front of myself as I backed a step or two away.

Aqua was bright red as usual, practically shaking in anger, but I glared right back at her. Dylan held some of the blame for my death, and I was currently both alive and gifted with abilities I'd never have had otherwise—which really took the edge off—but the simple fact was that I was _dead_ and all but one of the few people I'd ever cared enough about to know properly were beyond my reach, probably forever. And it was _her damn fault._

The urge was there. To lash out, not just with words but with hands and feet and air and fire, to trap her in a shell she could never escape and just constantly feed in more and more oxygen/hydrogen mix for a perpetual, burning hell…

But in the end, what she had done wasn't worth it. She wasn't cruel. She wasn't a murderer, a rapist, a torturer or an abuser. She was an airheaded goddess, not even an empty-headed academic because she completely lacked the context that would let her empathise with humans.

She didn't deserve my hatred. My words and my petty vengeance, the occasional trip or dope-slap if I had reason to deliver it, my quiet enmity? She deserved all of those.

But not my hate. _That_ , was something very few people deserved.

So I glared at her, as she stood in my doorway, but my hands were steady and unclenched as I folded my arms across my chest. "Go back to bed, Aqua." I told her, turning away. "I'm going out anyway. I need something to eat, and I need to talk to Dylan about something."

I picked up my hoodie from the bed, Stray Cat stirring and winding its way up my arm to my shoulder before settling down around my neck with a purr. As I headed out the door, Aqua was still standing there, cheeks puffed out and glaring impotently at me.

I paused, just before I shut the door, thinking about something. Reaching my hand out to the bubble still floating over my bed, I tried to draw it closer to me. It took a few moments, and was far from the fastest thing in the world, but it _did_ come and landed in my hand.

I tossed it to Aqua. "Here. For your hangover."

The goddess caught the bubble easily, probably her stats at work again, and lifted it to look into it with a confused expression. "How is this meant to help–"

" **Ignite."**

I whistled to myself as I walked down the corridor, Aqua rolling around on the floor and screeching like a banshee behind me. The quick burst of fire wouldn't hurt her at all; even if she _wasn't_ a goddess, and a goddess of water at that, the flame burned too quickly to catch. That said, a hydrogen/oxygen mix made for a loud explosion, especially at the size and concentration of the bubble I'd handed her, and at that range it would have been like a sledgehammer to her aching skull.

I didn't hate Aqua. But that didn't mean I wasn't going to be a complete dick to her.

-x-x-x-

"Morning, Luna," I greeted the blonde as I entered the Adventurer's Guild.

"Good afternoon, Douglas," she replied, and as if to agree with her my stomach growled. "Would you like something to eat?"

I valiantly ignored my burning ears as I nodded. "Yes please."

"You go and sit down," she declared, chuckling quietly, "we'll get you something in a minute."

I took a seat near the wall, leaning back into the chair with a sigh. There had been no particularly eminent signs of Dylan on the walk here, so I held out hope that he hadn't got into anything particularly outrageous since I'd last seen him. I'd get something to eat, then maybe I'd grab something from the request board and go looking for him. For now, I would enjoy the relative tranquility of the quietly murmuring guild hall and prepare for what remained of the day in peace.

…

I cracked open an eye. "Huh. I was honestly expecting something really irritating to happen just then—"

"SOMEONE HELP! A MONSTER ATE MY PARTY!"

' _Aaand there we go.'_ I sighed to myself. Then I blinked. ' _Wait, what?'_

The man panting in the doorway to the guild hall didn't look so great. He was bloodied and battered, his cloak and what looked leather armour torn pretty much to shreds. The entire hall had turned to look at him when he appeared, and now several figures in white robes were hurrying towards him, various styles of staff glowing.

"Someone...please…" he gasped, collapsing into the doorframe and sliding down, leaving a streak of blood behind. "The villagers...are still…"

He lapsed into unconsciousness, a veritable scrum of healers clustered around him with a lot of quiet murmuring, and apart from that there was silence in the hall.

I recognised that quiet. I could pick it up as easily as I could point out a three-foot spider on a white wall. This was the quiet that kept an entire room in their seats with just a thought – 'Do I want it to be me?'

Whoever got up first was going; that was the way the mentality worked. The first person to make a noise or significant movement was going to have to go out of that door, backtrack up that poor bastard's path and take on whatever wiped out his party.

A full party of adventurers. That probably meant at least four, maybe more of them. That guy was probably the party rogue based on his appearance; that he'd only barely got away, and in such a state, said that whatever they had faced down was either really fast, really well-hidden, or both.

This was a room full of warriors, but still the silence came. That was human nature.

It was almost comforting, to see that some things didn't change. That was what I thought to myself as I stood up, drawing almost every eye in the building, and turned to Luna. "I'm afraid I'll have to get a rain-check on that lunch, Luna."

My footsteps were extraordinarily loud as I walked over to the healers and kneeled down beside the man. He was already conscious again, but there was barely any life in him as he turned to meet my eyes. "Where?"

"Go north," he said, "it's only a few miles, but you'll be a near it before that."

"Alright." I nodded. "Can you tell me anything?"

The man's mouth began to move, but I could see the moment his entire jaw seized. The vein on the side of his neck popped out, his eyes widening as he choked on his own breath.

...That was a really bad memory.

"Alright," I said again, standing up. "Rest. I'll be back later."

As I walked out of the guild hall's door, I considered that this was stupid. There was no guarantee that I could handle this alone, Stray Cat and magic or no, and I should really try and rouse some other adventurers or go and find Dylan.

Except I didn't. Because that was my nature.

It was a personal failing...but the kind of person who breaks a silence like that, isn't the kind of person who would ask for help. It's not a matter of pride, really, just...the way I am.

' _Of course, I might not be asking for anyone else's help…'_ I considered, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my adventurer's card. ' _But that doesn't mean I'm going to go into this helpless.'_

I had fifteen skill points left. That should be plenty.

-x-x-x-

My watch said that I set out from Axel at roughly one in the afternoon. I wasn't sure if my watch was actually accurate to the time of...whatever this world was called (I'd have to learn that at some point), but I was at least sure that I had in fact been jogging for almost half an hour at this point.

I was making very good time too, if I was any judge. Cycling wind around myself constantly kept me cool enough to not overheat, drawing higher concentrations of oxygen into my lungs kept my breathing in order, and forming air shells beneath my feet and making them 'bouncy' kept my feet unhurt and also put an extra spring in my step.

Quite literally. There were several bushes on the roadside behind me with impressions in them that would be rather embarrassing if anyone ever matched them to me.

I had contemplated bubbling myself and just rolling forward, but what pride I had wouldn't let me. There were also issues like staying on the floor of the sphere while it was moving rather than getting pasted to the interior of the bubble at any decent speed, but it was mostly a matter of pride.

...Except, well, my legs _were_ getting kind of tired...could it really hurt?

Five minutes later, I was assured it could, as the giant bubble that I had started riding in crashed into a tree and finally popped.

I blinked out into the world as I lay upside-down at the base of a tree, waiting for everything to stop spinning. Stray Cat was whining beside me, and I turned vaguely in its direction. "I really shouldn't listen to me. I have _horrible_ ideas."

Stray Cat agreed with a yowl.

"Well, I guess we'd better get going again…" I sighed, pushing off the tree with my feet that were currently resting a few feet up its trunk. I collapsed onto my front, and I sighed into the dirt. "Ow."

Getting up again, I rubbed my neck, trying to get out the kink. "Well, at least it wasn't full of Beedrill or anything," I said to myself.

" _SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—!"_

I shot up straight, Stray Cat scrambling up my knees to my neck as I spun around and clamped my hands over my ears, frantically willing the air around them sealed at the same time to cut off the utterly un _godly_ noise. "What the _fuck—"_

And then something big and furry fell out of the tree in front of me.

It was dark grey, four-legged, built like a tank and its shoulder was level with my head.

My first thought was, ' _Why the fuck was there a bear up that tree?!'_

Then it turned towards me, and that thought mutated. ' _Why the fuck that does that bear have an owl's head?!'_

Dark eyes glared at me from within what was unmistakably an owl's face, complete with beak, on the front of an owl's head, but perched at the front of a bear's body. A _very large_ bear's body.

I blinked. "...Seriously, _what the f—"_

Then it body-checked me, snarling silently in the eerie soundlessness of my self-imposed ear sealing, and as I went tumbling across the ground I decided I just didn't care.

By the time I got a look at it again, it had almost completely closed the distance between us, and that beak was looking rather menacing. " **Stray Cat!"**

My Stand snarled, tail lashing, and an uncontrolled burst of wind filled the gap between us. The massive creature barely slowed, but I had enough time to get a solid shell up in front of me. The owl-bear practically ran it over, the shape breaking under its weight and claws, and I barely got away before the second it had bought was up.

Re-summoning the bouncy shells for my feet, I sprang into the air with my next step, my direction basically at the whim of whatever capricious god was watching me (please not Aqua, please not Aqua, please not Aqua…) but at least taking me away from the creature. In mid-air, I did my best to stay turned in its direction as it ran to catch up with where I would land. Its fur didn't act like fur, I noticed. It acted a lot more like feathers. " **Kazedan!"**

The shot pulled together in Stray Cat's bulb, then fired.

The owl-bear took the shot right in the upper back, crashing into the ground as the shockwave spread from detonation. There'd been none of the spiralling penetration I'd seen on the toads, I noticed – and from the way it was getting up again, this thing was a damn sight tougher than they had been. At least, as far as shock went.

' _Well, alright.'_

I took off again in my springing run, staying ahead of the owl-bear's beak and claws as it rumbled along with a juggernaut's antithetical grace. As I ran, I focussed on an idea that had occurred to me earlier in the day. ' _Hydrogen/Oxygen core to start, packed in tight but not tight enough to become water.'_

After seeing me do it earlier, Stray Cat had picked up the trick of straining elements from the air. His bulb swirled shut, the bullet building slowly. Glancing behind me, my eyes widened as I found the owl-bear in mid-leap, bearing down on us quickly.

I turned on my next landing, but the swipe of a powerful leg fouled me. I felt something twist nastily, and I had to swallow a cry as my next jump was wrong-footed, sending me cartwheeling through the air more than it sent me forward.

Stray Cat finished building the core. ' _Carbon Dioxide as the outer shell…'_

The next layer was pulled in, but the owl-bear was coming in too. My ankle screamed at me as I landed again, even with the cushion of the air-shell on my foot, and I lost the moment I would have needed to jump as it screeched again, its beak wide and a vague thrumming in my bones even as it failed to reach my ears.

My mind flashed back to the morning, and I slammed my hand into the ground. " **Sand!"**

A roughly metre-cubed area of dirt suddenly became finely-packed sand, and my own grasp of my Stand's powers blasted it into the air before whipping it into a frenzy.

The owl-bear's eyes snapped closed, its course immediately fouled as it went thundering past me, the sand whipping at it all the while. I was left safe in my own personal atmosphere, and Stray Cat informed me without words that the bullet was done.

I dropped control of the wind, letting the sand fall away, and levelled my hand at the the owl-bear. It was turning around now, shaking its head to rid it of the irritating particles. Perfect.

Stray Cat launched the specially-made Kazedan, and at almost the same time I called on the second of the six Skills I had learned since leaving Axel. " **Fireball!"**

A roiling ball of flame erupted from above my palm and soared along in the path of the wind-bullet. The first projectile hit home, and the outer sphere of CO2 blew apart in the usual shockwave...but the inner sphere's detonation was pressed inward by the first, stopping its contents from immediately spreading and leaving the area with an unusually high concentration of hydrogen and oxygen.

Then the fireball hit home.

I watched the explosion with satisfaction. ' _I think I'll call that one Fuego Roy.'_

I patted Stray Cat as we watched the owl-bear lay still, done in somewhere between the blasting and the burning. "You don't suppose this was what we were meant to deal with?"

Stray Cat looked at me. "Yeah, I don't think so either."

-x-x-x-

I reached the village at a little past two in the afternoon. I had made two shells that were roughly the right shapes for walking sticks, created the smoothest shell I could and turned it into a disk which I anchored around my feet, then done a bastardised cross-country ski for the remainder of the journey. I was a bit embarrassed I hadn't thought of it before, but I supposed that there was nothing to be done.

The path took me through a forest that had grown pretty deep, the trees close and dark around me as I practically flew across the ground. The back of my neck had been prickling since I crossed the border into the treeline, and Stray Cat was looking around warily.

I understood what he'd meant by 'being near' it before I got there, now. I was definitely in something's territory. Now I just had to draw it out and kill it.

I scoffed to myself. 'Just'. I'd almost had my ass handed to me by a _bear with an owl head._ This was _not_ going to go well for me.

Arriving in the village didn't do much to change my opinion of that, honestly.

People had been going missing lately. Not 'wandered away' missing or 'gone without a trace' missing, but 'had their windows broke in in the middle of the night' missing. There would be the sound of shattering glass, maybe a scream, then flapping and by the time anyone got there the person was gone and never seen again. There were sometimes spots of blood or really big footprints around, the footprints bearing three clawed toes and a single rear claw, but no one ever really caught proper sight of the thing.

From the glimpses some people _did_ see, they knew that it was tall. _Really_ tall. More than tall enough to stand on the ground and reach into a second-storey window to snatch someone out of their bed.

So, I was dealing with some massive winged creature that liked to snatch human beings, probably to eat. If the other adventurer's party was anything to go by, at least.

Lovely.

' _F-rank Luck indeed…'_

I asked about what the other adventurers had done when they arrived, and I was shown the camp they'd set up on the very edge of the clearing made by the villagers' logging efforts, which was a decent way from anyone's home. There was blood and the remains of equipment scattered every which way, including what looked like the remains of some hastily-constructed hides where people might have hidden.

I searched the single tent that was left half-standing, discovering a half-packed bag. Something occurred to me. "Hey, do you know when this actually happened?"

"I'm not sure…" the villager accompanying me said, "but the screaming was pretty early this morning."

I turned to look at the camp-site again. ' _They must have been lying here all night if they arrived here yesterday...then when it didn't come out, they started packing up for the day?'_

It made sense. They'd been up all night, and when nothing showed they let their guard down. Then the creature had come to play. ' _Dammit. This thing is intelligent.'_

I looked every which way, wandering a bit into the forest and scouting around. I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking for, but what I _found_ was a place where the canopy was disturbed and plantlife had all been pushed away from where it looked like something heavy had rested. ' _It stayed here and watched them, then pounced when they weren't aware.'_

"This just keeps getting better and better," I sighed, and Stray Cat seemed to agree.

I walked back into the clearing, considering what remained of the camp. "...Well, they're not using it anymore."

Among the various torn, battered and blood-covered supplies, I scavenged three partway-full money pouches, some shredded backpacks with odds and ends of adventuring equipment, and the various remains of gear that looked like it had been mauled by a bear. ' _So, claws then. Not just teeth.'_

Around the remains of the campfire lay two swords—one short, one long—, a battleaxe, a snapped bow and a snapped staff. ' _Poor bastards must have put them down to pack. They really never had a chance.'_

I found a chestplate lying beneath a collapsed tent. It looked like it had been taken off, rather than tearing free – going from the lack of damage, anyway. But there _was_ blood on it, some traces of cloth, and several of the buckles and ties were undone… ' _Maybe they were putting it on as the attack came?'_

I blew out a breath as I stared around the camp once more. "...Okay," I said to myself. "It's all just one big problem. Start with the small things."

I gathered up everything too badly ruined to save and piled it in the campfire pit, gathering the scattered logs that must have been next to it when lit and putting them in too. Everything that was left, I lined up beside me to pick and choose.

The short-sword, still in its sheathe, went around my waist on a belt. The longsword I plunged into the dirt after inspecting it, hilt-up in case I might need it – but when I picked up the battleaxe, the damn thing turned out to be too heavy. I dropped it right on the chestplate with a massive _clang,_ and the sound reverberated off into the woods like the bell of God himself. ' _Well, if it didn't know I was here before it sure as hell knows now.'_

I drummed my fingers on my leg as I stared out into the woods, following my train of thought…

Then stopped.

I'd thought that area of white was birch trees...but thinking about it, this forest was pine trees. There _was_ no birch here.

I slowly looked up.

The creature that looked down on me was easily two storeys at the shoulder in height. It was skeletal, looking literally nothing but bone in its sickly shade of white, with a vaguely Xenomorphic build consisting of a head, torso, two arms, two digitigrade legs, a tail and six wings. Every finger or toe was a clawed talon stained permanently red, and the long, whip-like spined tail with a nasty-looking stinger on the end was similarly coloured.

The wings were insectile and came in three pairs, like massively oversized flies' wings whose connecting spines were the same red as the claws. And the creature's face looked a lot like a flattened dragon's skull, if I was to put any kind of description to it at all.

Oh – and of course, the entire damn thing was covered in spikes. Because fuck me.

Its eyes were bloody red pools full of malevolent intellect as they stared right back at me.

"...Well, _fuck."_

I took off. I formed a shell of air around me, formed another in front of me and then burst the second, sending myself rocketing away across the clearing to gain distance as Stray Cat began to form a Kazedan. The monster barrelled after me, pushing apart the trees in its approach, and I quickly realised that it was a _lot_ faster than the owl-bear.

The Kazedan wasn't fully formed by the time it reached me, and I started forming as many layers of shells between me and it as I could manage—

—Only to have it completely pierce them all with its stinger in a single thrust, the bladed red tail barely deflected at all and blowing away the hair on the side of my head as it passed. The wind it scattered smelled like old decay. ' _Shit!'_

I commanded Stray Cat to let the Kazedan fly, simultaneously collapsing the outer shells and forming a new one around my skin before pushing it out fast. The half-formed air bullet exploded outwards in more of an air cannon, not even fazing the creature but kicking back hard enough to carry Stray Cat and I along for the ride. The expanding shell of air pressed against both the creature and the ground as it made to follow, bouncing me into the air and over the canopy like a rubber ball.

I would have undoubtedly bounced around in the ball as I flew, but I'd learned from my little collision with the tree. The free space in the bubble was filled with other, smaller bubbles, that stopped me from bouncing around and provided a crash buffer at the same time.

My mind raced for something to do, and inspiration struck me.

I had no idea what it was that had changed with my mind's eye lately, but I wasn't going to ask about it. Not when I could hold the images for H, O and CO2 in my mind at once to pull _this_ off.

The monster came up over the trees on whirring wings almost at once, its long, emaciated arms reaching out for me with bloody claws at an alarming rate. They couldn't get through my first shell as easily, not without anything to push me against, but as its wings pushed it forward while my speed fell, it compromised the outer shell—

—And I gave it hell. " **Ignite!"**

The section of bubbles facing towards the creature were all a purely hydrogen/oxygen mix, while the ones closest to me were carbon dioxide. With the tougher barrier I had set up around myself and the 'rear' part of my outer bubble, the resulting blast was directed forward, sending me flying further but making sure the eruption of fire and force was totally in the creature's face.

There was some nasty kick from the reaction, but I took the ache as an acceptable trade-off for having dealt some hurt.

Until the creature just kept flying, anyway. It barely looked like it had noticed.

' _Oh fuck this F-rank luck!'_ I thought to myself, sticking a hand out. " **Fireball!"**

The ball of flame shot forward and splashed over the creature's face and back. It didn't even scorch. ' _So either my skills are too weak or this thing is fire-immune. Either way,_ fuck.'

I hit the canopy moving pretty damn fast, and with a lot of the packing bubbles and my outer sphere gone, it resulted in a pretty bad landing. My bad ankle screamed bloody murder at me, while my supposed 'good' one filed its own complaint, and I had barely sent myself rolling out of the way when the creature descended on the tree that I'd ended up beside and turned it into matchsticks and kindling.

Seeing an opportunity, I yelled " **Kazedan!"** and Stray Cat obliged, launching the bullet it had charged into the mess of wood particulates while I lashed out with my own " **Ignite!"**. The resulting burst of sound and slamming force staggered even the creature, while my own eardrums rode it out under protection and my new outer bubble let me take the force and roll with it.

' _Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink,'_ went the mantra in my brain, my eyes darting around as I looked for something I could use. ' _Gotta be something gotta be something.'_

There was nothing. Or at least, nothing that sprung to mind before the creature caught up with me and went through all my shells with a single swipe. This time, I felt the claws dig in, and it was disturbing that I couldn't hear my own scream as the burning lines dug themselves in across my chest.

The extra force once again sent me flying, and in the moment it bought I cast another spell I'd picked up. " **Raise Earth!"**

A three-metre-tall, two-metre-diameter-base obelisk of earth and stone erupted from the ground, not much of a barrier to the creature but giving me something to work with as I yelled " **Sand!"** and 'grabbed' at all the air around me before flinging it that way.

The creature shielded its eyes from the resulting particle storm, leaving me free to seal the air around me before launching myself up into a tree on the kickback of another half-done Kazedan, swinging into the heart of its canopy with the rushed dexterity of someone running _really_ high on adrenaline.

I thought frantically as I pulled off my hoodie and pressed it to my torso, whining through clenched teeth at the pain but knowing it would be better than bleeding out. ' _Come on,'_ I demanded of myself, ' _there's got to be_ something. _Wind and fire don't work, I don't have anything that can do damage with water, so it's got to be something with stone.'_

I blinked. ' _That could work.'_

The question was, how the hell was I going to get it in position?

I considered for a moment, then blinked as I had an idea. "This is going to make me look really stupid if it doesn't work…" I muttered, then formed a bubble in my minds before holding it near where my good foot rested on the branch. A few seconds later, I held the bubble again and it seemed to vibrate slightly. ' _Oh thank you sweet JoJesus for Stand bullshit.'_

I handed the bubble to Stray Cat, who loaded it into its bulb, turned and fired.

The bubble quickly travelled deeper into the forest...and when it burst, it let out the sound of feet on wood. Or, in other words, the sounds of someone running. After all, if Stray Cat could seal air to not let sound pass, why should that sound degrade if it was properly trapped?

...Well, apart from physics, but I had a Stand. Physics could kiss my fabulous ass.

The creature took off like a shot, following the sound, and as it went I dropped down out of the tree on the other side. I might only have a couple of seconds, so I quickly started casting **Raise Earth** and then **Sand** , keeping the area around me sealed for sound, and ignoring the growing headache, dizziness and feeling of fatigue through a combination of heart-pounding panic and adrenaline.

Cubic towers of earth started rising from the ground, then turning into sand that would be pulled into one of Stray Cat's bubbles and pulled to float beside me, as I started constructing a pit.

I was constantly looking over my shoulder as I worked. I expected the monster to come back into view any second, turning the tree behind me into nothing but debris and doing the same to my bleeding self to boot. Except, it didn't.

I somehow had enough time to get the pit complete, and I lifted the sand bubbles into the trees above, hiding them among the branches and glancing into the massive hole I had dug. It should be more than big enough for the thing to stand in...certainly not deep enough to stop it getting out, but then again that part was for the sand I'd drop on it. My head was fuzzy, now – I didn't think I could get it relevantly deeper without wiping myself out.

So I gathered myself, stood up straight, and did something really stupid.

I dropped the sound sealing, stood with first a tree and then the pit between me and the monster, then yelled at the top of my lungs (which really wasn't very loud, between the blood loss and the fear, and cracked like a thirteen-year-old who had just been kicked in the balls). "WELL COME ON THEN YOU PASTY ASSHOLE!"

The sounds of hundreds of years of ecological progress being bowled through by a two-storey white bone monster wasn't exactly music to my ear. Still, it was useful for judging the monster's progress – and it let me drop a bubble of sand just as the monster burst _through_ the tree in front of me.

For all the good it did.

The moment it hit the cloud of sand, the creature jumped up high. The beat of its wings pushed the sand down, the grains pouring off my body-shell, and it was suspended with the sun shining down on it from above. Its shadow, made large by the distance, covered me and left only its glowing eyes as more than a silhouette.

It had learned. It had learned that the sand meant I was trying to distract it, so it had gone 'around' in the way nature had provided for it. I'd forgotten the thing was intelligent; of course it would learn from its mistakes.

The sand was too low relevant to the monster to try and drop it now. None of my spells would help here. I couldn't get a Kazedan ready in time to try and knock it from the sky. No shell I could form was going to repulse it when it fell. I had no time to evade.

All of that ran through my mind in a heartbeat, and I felt something _click._

' _This is how I die.'_

And to think, for all my talk in the adventurer's guild, it was my own fault for acting like a 'main character'.

' _Sorry, Dylan,'_ I managed to think. ' _I fucked it up.'_

Then a glowing, fist-sized rock flew over my head with a _crack,_ its ominous purple aura flaring brightly as it passed. It hit the creature's chest almost dead-centre, shattering into pieces on impact – and then every single fragment exploded all at once.

The resulting detonation was almost beyond belief, the sound of it more an enraged roar than a blast as it shook me on its way through. The shockwave lifted me off my feet, leaving me to fall down on my back and it sent the canopy swaying to and fro as sand and wood fragments scattered while the creature was blown out of the sky like God had swatted it, crashing down in the pit that it had been leaping over.

"You know, you shouldn't do this kind of thing without me," a familiar voice drawled from the treeline. "I came running as soon as Luna told me that you'd taken off alone."

Dylan walked from beneath the trees' shadows to stand beside me. My vision wasn't at its best right now, but even with everything going blurry, I could make out his face. Despite the sarcastic comment, it was clear to see…

Dylan wasn't smiling.

The monster's arms slammed into the ground and dug red talons in, its wings beginning to rise as it prepared to launch itself up and out of the pit so it could reach us – reach _me._

Dylan glowed purple, Killer Queen's limbs overlaying themselves on his own. The ground at his feet exploded, propelling him at the creature. Reorienting himself in mid air, Dylan's feet slammed home into its face with a massive _bang_.

It didn't do too much overall, only knocking the creature's head back a metre or so. Still, it let out a horrid screech, its arms whipping around towards Dylan. I saw its bloodied claws slam closed around Dylan's torso. They held for about two seconds before a purple glow emanated from the bony cage.

The claws were forced open to reveal Killer Queen, looming over Dylan's shoulders as it appeared to defend its master. The Stand let up the pressure of its push for just a moment to pull back its arms, then punched outward into the creature's skeletal palms. The monster roared, its hands knocked wide apart from the force as Dylan dropped to the ground and jumped back towards me.

Forming the detonator sign, his hands glowed that menacing purple. It was _far_ brighter than anything he had done before. " **Tick, Tick,** _ **Boom**_ **."**

And with that, the creature's arms were _decimated_ with a massive explosion apiece, ripping along them from the outside in and leaving behind little more than broken, bloody stumps below the elbow. Without any upper limbs to support it, the creature fell forwards onto the side of the pit, slowly sliding down as it let out a constant, keening scream of rage and pain.

"Make an Air ball, surround that with sand, and then make a thin layer around that to hold it together," Dylan ordered.

I did as he said, mostly out of trust but also partially because my mind was completely out of whack and I really didn't think I could do _anything_ of my own accord right now. The sphere of solidified air formed over my right palm, while my left oriented toward one of the big bubbles of sand from the canopy and I focussed on dragging it down. Once it was right before me, I shoved the sphere in my right hand into the one over my left, the sand within pushed aside to make way for the ball of compressed gas.

I blinked as Killer Queen reached _through_ the layered air ball, a flash of purple just faintly visible through the sand as the Stand's power flowed. It then grabbed the ball with two hands before throwing it at the creature which was just starting to appear out of the pit, its wings buzzing as it rose.

The ball fell between its wings with uncanny accuracy, Dylan stepping in between me and the monster. Killer Queen formed in front of him, shielding him, and he formed a detonator with his outstretched hand.

There was an audible _click_ as he brought his thumb down _._

The ball detonated, sand exploding through the thin layer of air with all the force imparted by the detonation that had just occurred within. Each grain went flying off like it was shot out of a gun, and the cloud of high-speed particulates proceeded to _shred_ the creature's insectile wing membranes, sending it falling back down into the pit once more.

I had just been lying in place since Dylan arrived, not even sure what to do except when he asked for the ball. My mind was scattered, trains of thought all derailed and all that seemed left was doubt and fear.

Then a strong arm grabbed mine, pulling me up to my feet. The stabbing and burning pains of my ankle and chest provided a momentary clarity of mind; my hoodie pressing deeper into the bleeding wound to try and hold it off a bit longer made it last. "I think you deserve the final blow, if you're up for it?"

I turned to look at my friend. Then I turned back to the monster, where it was lying in the pit, and met its glowing red eyes.

...I was afraid to approach it.

This thing, it had killed me. It had me dead to rights, with no way to save myself. If Dylan had been even a few seconds later than he had been I would be dead, not just bleeding.

Dying the first time...it had come out of nowhere, after I was knocked unconscious by a fall. I hadn't had time to be scared.

Yet now, I was scared. I was trembling with the fear.

And when I thought about all the people this thing had killed, the people whose families had to mourn their loss and that lone adventurer who'd come running back…

That fear made me so _fucking_ _ **mad.**_

What right did I have to be afraid of this thing, when it was wallowing here half-dead? Where did I get off being scared, when other people had already fought to the last?

I raised my fist.

The whistling started quiet. Then it grew louder, from the volume of a flute to a whistle at full blast. Then it rose into the territory of a train whistle, then a howling wind, then finally a jet turbine as my fist opened wide, the tiny kernel of stupidly-far-compressed air within bursting outward into a spinning sphere of wind so fast and so dense it distorted the light and seemed to glow from within.

"Go back to hell you piece of shit!" I snarled, raising the spinning sphere above my head where Stray Cat leapt to meet it. " **RASENGAN!"**

The Kazedan that Stray Cat had been charging met the rage-borne sphere of tearing winds in my hand, and the resulting cannonball of cyclonic _fuck you_ crossed the distance between me and the monster's face with a massive _crack._

None of my attacks before had even really scratched it...but it turned out that having Dylan crash into it, along with the explosions that followed, had _really_ done a number on the thing's natural armour plating.

Its face's plating was torn away by the Rasengan's grind, followed by the skull beneath – which then bent, shattered and finally imploded completely under the cannonball's initial impact. The vulnerable internals behind were minced, sucked into the sphere, torn up and thrown out, before the Rasengan finally hit a part of the monster that hadn't weakened so much and the outer sphere was perforated.

The resulting explosion of air pressure and random wind currents tore gouges from the sides of the pit and scattered the head's viscera over the ground and trees, leaving the headless body to slump into the pit with all the grace and dignity of a drunk thrown from a bar.

I was left staring, panting and with a front that was being progressively covered in blood, at a monster's headless corpse where it slumped in the grave I had made for it.

...God, my luck really sucked.

"Hey Doug, look at me."

I turned.

He grinned.

"Want me to rip off that fucker's tail as a trophy?"

...I couldn't help but laugh. "Why the fuck not?"

Then I tried to take a step on the ankle I'd completely forgotten was fucked, fell to the ground, jolted my chest wound and blacked out.

Because really, how else was I going to end today?

 **-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-**

 **AN: And that's the end of the third chapter. For all those following to know, when we are not doing stuff canon to Konosuba, we will be doing DnD style missions to pass the time. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as we did writing it.**


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